


The Ghost in You

by Angels_Heap



Series: Sometimes You Need [2]
Category: Half-Life
Genre: Angst, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, John Freeman in a serious context, Major Character Injury, Written Before Half-Life: Alyx
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:40:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 62,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21812320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angels_Heap/pseuds/Angels_Heap
Summary: Twenty years is a long time to be away from your loved ones. Shortly after breaking his silence, Gordon inadvertently resurrects some ghosts from his past and learns that he has been left in the dark about how the world went on without him. Barney is forced to confront some long-repressed memories. Alyx has a lot of questions.
Relationships: Barney Calhoun & Alyx Vance, Barney Calhoun & Gordon Freeman, Barney Calhoun/Lauren, Gordon Freeman/Alyx Vance
Series: Sometimes You Need [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1571695
Comments: 86
Kudos: 129





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is technically a sequel to If I Could, but that’s mostly just to save myself (and you all) some exposition at the beginning. Otherwise, I think it stands pretty well on its own. This started as an excuse to do something with some bits of dialogue that had been floating around in “cut content” purgatory for a while, but it ultimately took on a life of its own.
> 
> **Addendum, July 2020: I started writing this fic in December of 2019 (or sometime in 2011, depending on how you look at it), long before the newcomers to the HL fandom (many of whom have never played a HL game) decided to build a massive ship discourse mountain out of a possibly-slightly-weird-vague-lore-thing molehill. Since critical thinking skills appear to have gone out of style this year, I want to clarify a couple of things to anyone who may be reading this for the first time:**
> 
> **1\. There are a couple of references in this fic to Gordon (briefly, barely) knowing Alyx pre-HL1 canon. Everyone is appropriately slightly weirded out by this. If that is going to squick you out, which is totally understandable, hit the back button now.**
> 
> **2\. Remember, this is fanfiction; none of this is canon. In the HL games and surrounding lore, there is virtually no evidence suggesting that Gordon and Alyx canonically knew each other in any capacity at Black Mesa. As of right now, there is also _absolutely_ no evidence suggesting that they were close enough pre-canon for a post-HL2 relationship to be objectively socially unacceptable. In writing this, I chose to incorporate some goofy headcanons I've had for ~10 years that make up a very small component of this very long fic; nothing I've written here should be taken as "evidence" of any canonical pre-HL1 relationship. Do not use this fic as ammo to drag out the ridiculous ship discourse. (Also, if you're on the anti-Freemance side of the ship discourse, why are you here?)**
> 
> If you're still with me after all that: Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

“Are these _real_ eggs?” Alyx Vance asked as she marveled at the plate of hot breakfast food in front of her. Eggs, sausage, and potatoes that looked like they may not have been canned, powdered, or long expired were a rare treat, and it was especially shocking to see them all on the same plate.

“Yep,” replied Barney Calhoun, through a mouthful of eggs from his own plate. “I had the kitchen folks save some for you since I had a feeling you were gonna be fashionably late for breakfast.”

He paused, leaving the word “again” unspoken and grinning knowingly at his dining companion, who pointedly avoided his gaze. “The whole chicken farming operation's still pretty small, though, and the sausage is definitely headcrab. So, don’t get too excited.”

“Still, thanks for saving me some,” Alyx said with a genuine smile. She chose not to dignify Barney’s comment about her tardiness with a response. “And thanks for waiting around this morning so we could catch up. I didn’t even know you all had gotten back last night.”

Barney sighed and ran a hand through his graying hair. “Yeah, it’s a quick turnaround and we’re headin’ back out in a couple hours, though. Got some new intelligence and needed to stock up on ammo and whatnot, but it should be a quick mission since almost everything’s already in place. Get in, get out, probably back by tomorrow mornin’. We’re pretty confident they don’t know we know they’re coming.”

White Forest sentries had recently picked up radio chatter suggesting that a contingent of Combine soldiers were heading towards the base. The surviving Resistance members weren’t inclined to take any chances with their newfound sense of relative security, so they’d been tracking the group for several days and plotting a counterattack.

Although most of the Combine forces remaining on Earth had been left weakened, semi-isolated, and disorganized by recent events, they could still be dangerous in large enough numbers. Barney had pulled together a squad of rebels to engage the approaching Combine in the Outlands and take them out before they could get anywhere near the base. Alyx hadn’t seen Barney in nearly a week, as he’d been busy training some newer recruits and laying the groundwork for the ambush. 

Alyx enjoyed having a few minutes to really savor her meal as Barney described the rebels’ plan of attack in detail and solicited her feedback. She appreciated that her friend valued her input, and she was also thankful for his willingness to acknowledge that this wasn’t her primary area of expertise when he did so.

Since her father’s death, Alyx had often found herself in situations where other rebels expected her to possess the same knowledge, ideas, and opinions that her father had held, as if she could perfectly fill the void his loss had left in their organization and they could go on as if nothing had changed.

For the sake of team morale, she tended to keep her frustration to herself in these moments, choosing instead to vent to an always-sympathetic Gordon Freeman behind closed doors. It was nice to be reminded that Barney, too, understood that she and her father were—well, had been—two different people without having to be explicitly reminded of the fact. 

As Barney finished his explanation, complete with diagrams hastily scribbled on the back of his napkin, Alyx offered a thumbs up. Provided their estimates of how many troops were coming were correct and the Combine stayed on their current path, Barney was probably right that this would be a quick “get in, get out” mission.

She swallowed a bite of potatoes and took a sip of her coffee before responding verbally. “Yeah, that sounds great. You can take Dog too, if you need him. I’m sure he’d enjoy an opportunity to get out and explore, and you know he’s a team player.”

Barney nodded. “Thanks. Might take you up on that one. Never hurts to have a little extra oomph in the field, and I’ve missed the big guy.”

As Barney took a long drink from his mug of coffee—his third since they’d sat down—Alyx was struck by a pang of concern for her friend. One could tell just by looking at him that he was exhausted; he clearly hadn't shaved in days, he seemed incredibly tense, and his eyes lacked their usual spark.

In a serious tone, she reminded him, “Take care of yourself and let me know when you get back, okay? I’ve missed you, and I’m sure Gordon’s going to be bummed that he missed seeing you too.”

“Jesus, I’ll be back in less than 24 hours,” Barney replied, casting her a playfully disgruntled glance. “Quit makin’ it sound like I’m dying or deserting, okay? We’ll hang out after I get back.”

After a beat, he added, “Where is Gordon, anyway? Don’t y’all usually almost miss breakfast _together?”_

Once again, Alyx ignored her friend’s transparent attempt to get a rise out of her. “He got up early to work on the new teleport,” she explained, very matter-of-factly. As Barney stared at her, seemingly awaiting more details, she shrugged and added, “I slept in.”

“Ah, gotcha,” Barney replied with an eyeroll. “Just like old times, huh? Gordon’s standin' me up for breakfast because he got too excited about an experiment… but I’m used to it, you know. I can take it." His expression shifted to convey righteous indignation as he continued, "He should be ashamed of himself for having the nerve to abandon _you_ in favor of science, though. That is _no way_ to treat a lady! I’ll have to have a little chat with him when I get back.”

Alyx acknowledged her friend’s dramatic posturing with an eyeroll of her own. “Thank you for defending my honor, _Uncle Barney,_ ” she teased, employing a nickname she’d rarely called him since childhood. “I think I can handle him on my own.”

Barney opened his mouth to speak, and Alyx held up a finger before shooting her friend a warning stare. “Whatever joke you’re about to make, _don’t_.”

He grinned, held up his hands in mock surrender, and simply winked instead.

Satisfied that she'd successfully neutralized whatever dirty joke Barney had been formulating, Alyx switched her focus to finishing her breakfast. The pair lapsed into companionable silence as Barney followed suit, seemingly intent on savoring the last few bites of his unusually delicious meal before he’d have to haul himself out to the middle of nowhere to fight a bunch of aliens. Again.

Alyx imagined that Barney must find it weird, sometimes, having to strike a balance between his occasionally overprotective, almost familial relationship with her and his friendship with Gordon that practically dated back to a different lifetime, especially now that the two were… _involved._ So far, it appeared that Barney wasn’t inclined to pick a side, instead preferring to alternate between playing both roles to an extreme whenever he had an opportunity.

She had to begrudgingly agree that their dynamic, already somewhat bizarre and made more complex by the two decades Gordon had spent… not aging, offered quite a bit of comedic potential. Barney usually got much better reactions out of Gordon, who—unlike Alyx—had not had 20 years of practice tuning out their friend’s good-natured teasing. 

A couple minutes later, as she scraped the last forkful of eggs off her metal plate, Alyx broke the silence. “In all seriousness, Gordon’s been doing really well lately. We both have.”

Barney smiled and extended a hand across the table to affectionately clap his friend on the arm. “You’re good for each other,” he said. “I know I complain about how he won’t shut up now that he’s in such an annoyingly chipper mood all the time because you two are boning, but seriously, it’s nice to hear him talkin' so much. Reminds me of old times.”

A moment later, he added, “And I take it you two are sleeping through the night now, or at least you’ve both found some other way to deal with the night terrors. Robinson says nobody’s come knockin' on our door in the middle of the night while I’ve been in and out lately.”

Alyx nodded, feeling sheepish as she remembered how many times she’d woken up Barney’s roommate when she’d gone in search of comfort after a particularly bad nightmare or an especially rough night of grief.

The guy, Robinson—she never could remember his first name—was a saint for being such a good sport about all the late-night intrusions, and also for not telling anyone else at the base that she’d been struggling a lot more with her grief and stress than she typically let on.

She supposed Robinson was especially deserving of gratitude if he’d also protected Gordon’s reputation while he'd been seeking comfort for the same reasons; she hadn't missed Barney’s implication that she hadn’t been his only occasional nighttime visitor.

“Yeah, we’re sleeping a lot better. We’re down to, like… maybe every three days with the nightmares, now? And it’s nice to wake up and have someone right there already,” Alyx admitted. “By the way, _please_ don’t make me regret mentioning this, but thanks for the double mattress. I know you’re the one who set it aside for us.”

Barney snorted before responding with a cheeky grin, “You’re welcome. Honestly, it was worth it just to get you two to shut up about your back pain.” He made a show of hunching over the table and waving a fist in the air.

Adopting a stereotypical ‘old man’ voice, he continued, “You naïve young whippersnappers have no idea what _real_ back pain is. Also, nobody _forced_ y'all to share that tiny thing like you were hooking up at summer camp. My generous gesture was necessary to save you from yourselves and your foolish young love.”

Alyx rolled her eyes and offered a neutral grunt of acknowledgment. She wasn't going to provide any ammunition for future jokes at her expense if she could avoid it. 

“What do you kids do for fun around here, anyway?” Barney asked, not quite ready to drop the curmudgeonly old man act. “I’m assuming the state fair’s not comin' to town this year, there’s nothing good in theaters these days, and last I checked, the Olive Garden wasn’t takin' reservations.”

In response to Alyx’s blank, unamused stare, Barney switched back to his normal voice and tried a different approach. “Come on, seriously, I put a lot of energy into tryin’ to teach that guy how to impress women, back in the day. _Please_ tell me some of my hard work paid off.”

She shrugged. “There’s just so much going on around here,” she started, not quite sure what her friend wanted to hear. “We’re busy during the day, usually. We eat meals together, sometimes we go on walks or play with Dog when we have downtime, you know we basically live together… that’s how this is supposed to work, right?”

Barney dramatically shook his head and _tsk, tsk’ed_ to convey his (mostly) faux disappointment. “You two seriously haven’t been on an actual date yet? Have I taught Gordon _nothing?”_ He looked up at the ceiling and shook his outstretched arms to emphasize his despair, as if he was begging an omnipotent deity to tell him where he had failed, before bringing his gaze back down and suppressing a chuckle at Alyx’s confused and indignant expression.

He continued, “Look, I know there was an alien invasion and Gordon got caught in some kind of time warp and a bunch of other messed-up shit has happened, but that’s no excuse. There’s no romance! There’s no effort! What you two have right now sounds a lot more like therapy with benefits than a good old-fashioned relationship.”

To make his final point, Barney shifted back into his angry old man pose. “You tell Gordon that he has disappointed his elders, and I’ll deal with him myself later.”

“Wasn’t he like, two years older than you when you first met?” Alyx retorted, finding herself at a loss for a better comeback.

Barney conceded her point but did not back down. “I was basically the younger older brother he never had and _desperately_ needed.”

Before Alyx could respond, a small group of rebels in full tactical gear entered the mess hall, clearly looking for their leader. Barney waved at them before turning back to Alyx with an apologetic expression.

“Guess that’s my cue to suit up and get ready to head out.” He said his goodbyes quickly as he scrambled to get up from the table, leaving his dishes behind. “Thanks for the company and don’t take any of that too personally, okay? You know I just like messin’ with you. Tell Gordon I said hi and I’ll let you know when we get back. Should be sometime tomorrow.”

Alyx reached for her friend’s arm as he retreated, intent on saying a proper goodbye, and he beat her to the punch by turning on his heel and dramatically swooping her into a bear hug.

“Hey, Barney…” she murmured into his chest, “be careful, okay?”

“Always,” he replied with a grin as he released her from the hug. As he often did before they parted ways, he offered a sloppy but heartfelt salute, which Alyx returned.

“See ya when I see ya!” he hollered over his shoulder before joining his squad and disappearing around the corner.

Suddenly alone with her thoughts in the nearly empty dining hall, Alyx rested her head on one hand and used the other to pick a few leftover pieces of sausage off of Barney’s plate and pop them into her mouth. She started to reflect on what he’d said about her relationship with Gordon, until she caught a glimpse of the clock on the wall above her.

With a start, Alyx remembered that she was due to report to the garage for work in just a couple of minutes. After taking one last sip of her coffee, she rushed to gather up the breakfast dishes and headed out to start her day.


	2. Chapter 2

Later that afternoon, Alyx found herself with some unexpected free time, as the project she’d been assigned to work on had been finished much more quickly than expected.

She had initially planned to spend some of that free time upgrading the gravity gun, but she soon found herself sidetracked by an urgent need to find a new lightbulb for her workspace. After searching every single storage closet and failing to find a suitable bulb, Alyx reluctantly resigned herself to making the trek to the old storage shed at the edge of the property.

Like many of the other rebels at the base, Alyx tended to go out of her way to avoid visiting the flimsy, filthy outbuilding. However, she was out of other options. 

She was vaguely unsettled to find, upon reaching her destination, that the shed was already unlocked. Seconds after she swung the door open and stepped into the stuffy, confined space, she felt a chill rush down her spine as she realized that she was not alone. She could make out some faint shuffling and clanking sounds coming from the other side of the large shelving unit in the middle of the room, but she couldn’t see who (or what) was making the noise.

Fearing headcrabs at best and perhaps zombies or Combine at worst, she mentally cursed herself for not bringing her gun. She suppressed an urge to cough as she breathed in the dust that she suspected had been accumulating since before the Seven Hour War. She couldn't risk alerting the intruder to her presence.

As she scanned the entryway for a suitable makeshift weapon, her gaze settled on a metal shovel propped against the wall next to the door. It wasn’t ideal, but it would do in a pinch. 

In one swift motion, so as not to let the creature get the jump on her, she grabbed the shovel, wielded it like a baseball bat, and charged around the central shelving unit to find…

“Gordon?”

As she slowly lowered the shovel, Alyx had to laugh at her partner's open-mouthed expression of shock. He was sitting on the floor, leaning against a wooden crate for support, and he was surrounded by small piles of wires, tools, and electrical components. He'd dropped a cardboard box into his lap, spilling its contents, when she’d surprised him.

It was obvious that he’d been so engrossed in whatever he was doing, in typical Gordon fashion, that he simply hadn’t heard her come in until she’d charged at him.

“Gordon, you know how people keep saying you should wear a bell?” she asked, still giggling.

He nodded, finally snapping his mouth closed as his expression morphed from one of shock to convey a mix of relief and sheepishness.

“I think I get it now. You’re like a mouse sometimes.” Alyx gingerly stepped over his carefully sorted piles to sit down next to him, her lightbulb search momentarily forgotten.

As she settled down on the floor, she leaned over to kiss Gordon’s cheek, in lieu of offering a verbal apology for scaring him. He responded by pressing a soft kiss to her lips, and as he deepened the kiss, Alyx figured it was safe to assume she had been completely forgiven.

“What are you doing in here, anyway?” she asked as they broke apart, suddenly remembering the big teleport experiment Gordon was supposed to be working on.

“Change of plans… first trial did _not_ go well,” he muttered, shuddering. “Don’t tell Barney.”

“Oh God, another cat?” she replied, simultaneously horrified and intrigued.

Gordon shook his head. “Bird. It, uh…” he trailed off and pantomimed an explosion with his hands.

Still unsatisfied with his response, Alyx prompted him to elaborate. “So, you guys blew up a bird and now what? Dr. Kleiner sent you out here to find parts to fix the thing so it doesn’t happen again?”

“Not quite,” Gordon clarified, his shoulders slumping as he sighed deeply. “He and Magnusson were bickering about whose fault it was, and they realized we’d need something from the shed to fix the prototype. I… I don’t remember what they were looking for anymore, actually. They got into a screaming match about where to find it, because apparently Dr. Kleiner re-organized everything a few weeks ago, but Arne didn’t understand his system—which, to be fair, definitely doesn't make any intuitive sense—so he redid about half of it more recently, and now nobody can find anything.”

Gordon took a breath and adjusted his glasses before reaching the conclusion of his long-winded explanation. “So naturally, they sent _me_ out here to re-organize everything a third time while they fix the teleport.”

“Aw, you got Black Mesa’d again, huh?” Alyx offered a sympathetic half-hug. When Gordon didn’t reply, she continued, “You know this doesn’t mean they don’t value you as a scientist, right? They’re clearly just doing their weird competitive thing and Dr. Kleiner knows you love organizing stuff and hate confrontation, so he probably thought this was a good way to keep you out of it.”

Gordon sighed and leaned into the hug. “I know, I know. I was just excited to finally do something… not menial, now that I’m all caught up, and I kind of feel like I’ve been sidelined again.”

“Hey, I get it,” Alyx said, gently rubbing Gordon’s back in an effort to put him at ease. “I used to get mad at my dad all the time for keeping me out of the loop on things that I was more than qualified to help with… but most of the time, he had a good reason, even if it wasn’t obvious at first." She tilted her head to look him in the eye. "And honestly, do you _really_ want to be in that lab right now, watching those two scream at each other while wiping bird guts off of everything?”

The cringe she received in response suggested that there might have been more truth to her bird guts visual than she’d originally imagined, but regardless, Gordon seemed to get her point. He picked up the box he had dropped when she'd barged in on him and resumed his sorting task without another comment about the incident in the lab.

After a few beats of silence, he cast a sidelong glance at the since-discarded shovel and asked, “So, what brings you out here? Truck fixed already?”

Alyx nodded. “We finished early, and I couldn’t get any other work done because my desk lamp burned out. There wasn't a single spare bulb anywhere in the base, so I decided to check out here.”

Without looking up from what he was doing, Gordon deadpanned, “They’re either in the box labeled ‘L’ on Arne’s side of the shed or they’re in an unmarked box with whatever other gadgets Dr. Kleiner thought they belonged with on his side of the shed. Good luck.”

On a whim, Alyx decided to start with the ‘L’ box, which was within reach once she stood up. To her relief, it did indeed contain lightbulbs and it only took her a second to find the correct type.

“Aha!” she declared, triumphantly whirling around to show Gordon her prize.

He met her gaze and his expression briefly lit up with shared enthusiasm before suddenly falling. “Heading back inside, then?”

She thought for a moment. None of the other items on her to-do list were particularly urgent, and she _had_ missed out on some quality time with Gordon that morning. Not to mention, it looked like he had a pretty massive task ahead of him and he could probably use some help.

“Put me to work,” she said, grabbing another unlabeled box of miscellaneous electronic parts and returning to her earlier position on the floor, much to Gordon’s obvious relief and delight.

As she sat down again, Alyx wrinkled her nose. “I know I have a pretty high tolerance for filth, but I just have to say that this floor is _nasty.”_ She looked Gordon up and down, shaking her head. “This kind of thing is why I give you so much crap for sticking to Kleiner’s dress code.”

For as long as she could remember, Alyx had thought it was a bit ridiculous that Dr. Kleiner still insisted on dressing like a white-collar scientist, even though the world had practically ended and he was surely capable of doing the same work in much more comfortable, sensible clothing like jeans and a sweater, or perhaps a suit of protective armor, or hell, even in his pajamas.

Much to her amusement and occasional annoyance, Gordon had followed his mentor’s example after settling in at White Forest and had somehow acquired a small wardrobe of button-up shirts and khakis that he frequently wore when he expected to spend time in the lab.

When Alyx had first confronted him about the impracticality of his fashion choices, his only defense had been to shrug and point out that, unlike Kleiner, at least he wasn’t wearing a tie.

She knew, on some level, that this was a coping mechanism for Gordon—and probably for Dr. Kleiner as well—so she usually left the issue alone, but it was hard not to say something when confronted with the image of him sprawled out on a floor covered with decades worth of dust and dirt in _khakis,_ of all things.

“Those are your good jeans,” Gordon countered in an effort to undermine Alyx’s argument, as he leaned forward to add several matching spools of wire to a pile next to his foot.

She rolled her eyes. “I spent all morning crawling around under a truck in these. They’re already gross, and this is what they’re _for._ They’re _jeans._ ”

Gordon sat up and held up his hands as if to say, _‘Fine, fine, let’s just agree to disagree,’_ and she let the issue drop. She’d made her point. And besides, he looked awfully handsome in his ridiculously impractical clothing, so she supposed she couldn’t give him too much grief about it.

Alyx leaned against Gordon’s shoulder as he explained his sorting system and plan of action. She appreciated his methodical, reasoned approach and was pleased to discover that they might actually finish the job before sundown if they worked together.

As they set to work in silence, she soon realized, as was often the case when she was with Gordon, that she was going to have to talk first if she wanted to keep the conversation going. 

“So, you mentioned Barney earlier. I promise I won’t tell him about the bird, but it reminded me to tell you that he said hi. I had breakfast with him this morning.”

Gordon smiled at the mention of his friend. “How was he?”

“Tired, mostly,” Alyx said, recalling how exhausted Barney had looked when they’d talked. His demeanor had been pretty typical, but his face had given away that he probably hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in a while, and of course, he’d also chugged half a gallon of coffee. 

She continued, “He’s feeling pretty confident about taking out the Combine heading our way from the north—he walked me through the plan, and it seemed solid—but I’ll feel better when he gets a few days to relax.”

Gordon nodded in agreement, brow creased with concern, and Alyx was reminded of other parts of her breakfast conversation with Barney. She had decided not to tell Gordon that Barney was disappointed in his courting techniques (or perceived lack thereof), but nevertheless, the conversation had gotten her thinking.

Upon reflection, she figured Barney might have had a point about the unconventional pacing of their relationship. They’d rushed to further entangle their lives and establish a routine, both to preserve their sanity in an unforgiving, isolating world, and for practical reasons related to their communal living situation. Alyx was very happy with how things had progressed thus far, but perhaps they’d missed out on something important when they'd gone from dancing around each other to practically cohabiting in a matter of days. 

“Hey,” she started, “I know this is going to sound like it’s coming out of nowhere, but I was wondering…” She paused, trying to think how best to word this. “If you could take me on a date, anywhere, where would you pick?”

For a long moment, Gordon didn’t respond, but he seemed to be deep in thought, as indicated by the fact that he had abruptly stopped sorting screws and his eyes had rolled up towards the ceiling. After a moment, he asked, “Anywhere around here, or anywhere, period? Do pre-Combine destinations count?”

“Anywhere, period,” Alyx clarified. She figured he would name some romantic place in Seattle, or maybe Cambridge or even Innsbruck. They actually hadn’t talked much about Gordon’s past—in fact, most of their recent alone time had been devoted to less intellectual, more physical pursuits, and the past was also a sore topic for both of them—but she knew he felt a strong attachment to those places from his old life, and it stood to reason that he might want to share them with her.

She was completely caught off guard when he finally answered, with surprising finality and confidence, “Chicago.”

“Why… Chicago?” she asked, utterly failing to hide her confusion.

Gordon smiled and set down the box he had been rifling through, his expression suggesting that he was reliving some cherished memory that he hadn’t yet shared with her. “I’ve only been there once, for about 3 days when I presented at a conference there a few years ago—erm, quite a few years ago now, I guess,” he began, correcting himself as he often did when describing the passage of time.

“It’s—it was—a beautiful city, with amazing views of Lake Michigan, and Chicago has the most _incredible_ museums. I think it has—well, had—one of the biggest natural history museums in the world. I only got to spend about half a day there, and I think I only made it through three or four exhibits. A person could spend a week in the Field Museum alone…” He trailed off, seemingly lost in a memory.

After a few beats of silence, Gordon picked the box back up and continued speaking. “When I was there, they also had these colorful cows all over the city.”

Alyx furrowed her brow. “Like… cows, the farm animals?”

Gordon nodded. “Yes, but not real cows. They were public art installations… made of fiberglass, I think. A bunch of local artists designed them, and they all had themes.”

In response to her bewildered expression, he shrugged and moved on. “You’d have liked them, I think. And anyway, I always wanted to go back, since three days wasn’t _nearly_ enough time to see everything, but life kept getting in the way, especially once John decided he wanted to come along. After the conference, I finished my dissertation, and then I graduated… and then I went to Innsbruck _and_ I was job hunting… and then _John_ graduated, and I got hired at Black Mesa and didn’t have any vacation time, and then… well, you know.”

Alyx had tuned Gordon out shortly after he stopped talking about the cows, struck by the unfamiliar name that he’d slipped into his story so casually that she felt she was supposed to know who he was talking about.

She blinked slowly a few times, frantically searching her memories for any previous mention of someone named John. Was this a friend of Gordon's from college or grad school? Had he had a boyfriend at some point? Had Barney or her dad or Dr. Kleiner talked about this person before?

She felt a growing sense of confusion and dread, slowly accepting that she had absolutely no idea who Gordon was talking about, but also suspecting that admitting her ignorance would likely devastate him in some way. 

Once she’d wracked her brain long enough that Gordon seemed unsettled by her lack of a response to his monologue, she decided to go ahead and ask. She placed a hand on her partner’s arm, ready to comfort him in case her innocent question struck a nerve as she feared. 

“That sounds amazing, Gordon, but um… who was John?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before anyone asks, yes, the cows were a real thing. Google "Cows on Parade 1999."


	3. Chapter 3

Alyx watched Gordon’s face and gently rubbed his arm in what she hoped was a soothing motion as he seemed to rapidly cycle through a range of emotions, from confusion to sadness to a short blip of anger and finally back to confusion.

“My… brother?” he finally explained, seemingly unable to wrap his mind around the fact that Alyx had not already known this information. “Nobody ever mentioned… Barney or Dr. Kleiner didn’t…? They never…?”

“No,” she responded, still unsure exactly what he needed or expected her to say. “I mean, they never explicitly said you _didn’t_ have siblings, but they also never said you did, and I guess I just kind of figured you were an only child like me.”

Just that morning, Barney had mentioned that Gordon had never had an _older_ brother, so Alyx assumed John must have been younger. It was possible, she reasoned, that Gordon’s former work colleagues had never met him, since they hadn’t actually known each other that long before the Incident. It wasn’t like they had kept him a secret on purpose, right?

Gordon was quiet for a long time, processing this new information. Alyx was relieved that he didn’t seem upset with her for not knowing about this huge and important part of his former life, but he was clearly distressed by the whole exchange.

Finally, he spoke again. “Can I tell you about him?”

“Yeah, of course,” Alyx replied, because _obviously_ he could, and should, tell her about this person who had clearly meant so much to him that everyone else had inexplicably forgotten about—or pretended didn’t exist—for over twenty years.

She resumed sorting as she listened to Gordon, needing something to keep her hands busy as she fought against the urge to overanalyze the situation. She’d endured _two decades_ of near-constant Gordon Freeman mythology before actually meeting the man (again), and she’d grown up surrounded by his closest friends. How had it never been relevant that the supposed future savior of humanity had a _brother_? 

“I was ten when he was born,” Gordon started. “He was _definitely_ an oops baby, but I was pretty psyched about having a little brother. On the surface, we didn’t have a lot in common—he was extraverted, not the best at school, and _very_ into motorcycles—but we were still pretty close. He looked up to me, you know, and I did my best to protect him and set a good example… as best as I could from the other side of the country, anyway. I was in college and then grad school for a lot of his childhood.” 

Gordon paused to chuckle at a memory that he ultimately decided not to share aloud. “When I called to tell him about my trip to Chicago, I was not expecting him to be terribly interested. He usually wasn’t... but he was a good sport and always listened, anyway.”

He sighed, momentarily pausing again to collect his thoughts. “But for some reason, John _really_ wanted to go to the aquarium there, and he was also excited about the Field Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry. I told him I’d bring him with me when I went back... I mean, I couldn’t turn down this opportunity to foster his sudden interest in science, and I hadn’t seen him in a while... but the timing just… never worked out.” Gordon trailed off and furrowed his brow, seeming to suddenly remember where (and when) he was.

“Did he look like you?” Alyx asked, unable to contain her curiosity. She got a kick out of imagining a little teenage version of Gordon riding around on a motorcycle.

Gordon chuckled again, though the sound seemed hollow and lacked its usual warmth. “No, not at all. He looked more like our parents than I did, though, so I was actually the odd one out. He had dark hair and a… stockier build, I suppose you could say. He went through a couple phases of emulating my facial hair choices, but the resemblance pretty much ended there.”

Alyx couldn’t pass up the opportunity to ask, barely suppressing a sudden urge to laugh, “Did he _also_ have a ponytail in the late ‘90s?”

Much to her relief, the mention of the infamous ponytail that had become a running joke in their relationship seemed to dispel some of the tension surrounding Gordon’s bombshell revelation.

He fixed her with a glare for several long, tense seconds before dissolving into laughter, which sounded genuine this time. “No, and you would’ve been proud of how much he mocked me for that.”

Gordon’s face suddenly fell. “You would’ve liked him…” he murmured, and Alyx realized she needed to keep the conversational momentum going before Gordon got too carried away in his brooding. 

Eventually, if he hadn’t already, Gordon was definitely going to wonder what had happened to John, and she obviously had no idea, though it was a safe bet that he wasn’t still around, and the end of his life had not been terribly pleasant. They’d both need time to process all of this later, but this was not the time nor the place.

“Okay, so… for our date, we’d definitely go to the aquarium… for John?” she suggested, hoping to bring the conversation back around to where it had started. When he nodded, she prompted him to continue this thought experiment. “And then where would we go?”

“Well,” Gordon began slowly, “because this date would have to take place over the course of a weekend, or maybe a week-long holiday, we’d have to stay in a hotel. I think we’d spring for one of the really nice suites with rooms overlooking the lake, so we could watch the sun rise from bed every morning...” By the time he trailed off, Gordon had traded his earlier melancholy expression for a slightly goofy grin, and a hint of a blush colored his cheeks as he stared off into space. 

_‘Wow, Barney was_ not _kidding when he warned me that Gordon can be a hopeless romantic,’_ Alyx thought, though she certainly wasn’t complaining.

“And of course, we’d have to eat deep-dish pizza,” he added with excitement, his grin widening as he turned towards her. 

“I realize I may be flaunting my ignorance by asking this,” Alyx responded, slightly hesitant, “but… what is deep-dish pizza? I remember pizza, but is this just like… really thick pizza?”

“Actually… yes. Except the crust also has cornmeal in it, and the toppings are upside-down.” Gordon’s explanation was met with another blank stare. “The… the cheese goes on the bottom, and then all the other toppings, and the sauce is on the top. I think they made it that way so the cheese wouldn't burn.” He shrugged, unable to offer any additional context.

Alyx nodded and prepared to change the subject. This had started out as a fun exercise, but it was time to wrap things up before she learned some other shocking secret about Gordon’s past, like that he’d been married or had a kid or something. Anything seemed possible at this point.

“So, in summary, our dream date is a week-long vacation to Chicago where we watch the sun rise every morning, go to a whole bunch of museums and an aquarium, and eat a ton of really thick, upside-down pizza?”

Gordon nodded hesitantly. “Yes?”

Alyx wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned up to kiss him. “That sounds perfect,” she said, before kissing him again and pulling him closer. And it did, in all honesty. Those sounded like activities she would enjoy, and this hypothetical vacation sounded a lot like the ones her father had described when he'd told her about how he’d fallen in love with and married her mother.

So, Gordon probably had the right idea. It was just too painful, in this already intense moment, to risk allowing themselves to dwell on how unlikely it was that they’d ever have an experience like that... at least while they were young enough to fully enjoy it.

After breaking their embrace, they both resumed sorting in not-quite-comfortable silence. They'd moved onto boxes that mostly contained nails and screws that had been mixed together in storage for some inexplicable reason. The tedious task of separating them was a welcome distraction from the weight of their earlier conversation, though Alyx was still concerned that Gordon had been more affected than he was letting on.

As the silence began to feel suffocating, Alyx felt compelled to ask another question, even though she’d just told herself she didn’t want to know the answer. As they say, curiosity killed the cat… or, more recently, the bird.

“Hey, Gordon?” she whispered, not wanting to completely shatter the quietude all at once. He turned to look at her, his expression unreadable. “This is a sort of serious and also not completely serious question, but I have to ask… look, I have no idea why nobody mentioned your brother before now, but are you… do you have any other secrets that I should know about?”

His eyes rolled up to the ceiling for a moment as he searched his memory for any other tidbits of information that might fundamentally change how Alyx saw him. After a moment, he shook his head. 

“You _sure_?” she asked, mostly teasing but also still tense, steeling herself for another surprise. 

Gordon nodded, and then his expression of deep thought slowly transformed into a mischievous grin. Alyx breathed a sigh of relief at the indication that their conversation hadn't rattled him badly enough to diminish his sense of humor, although she still felt a bit on edge as she waited for him to go on. 

“Well, if you insist,” he replied, suddenly animated once again. “I’d be happy to share all my deep, dark secrets, just to get them off my chest.”

He cleared his throat. “When I was 13, I accidentally killed my science class’s hamster and blamed it on John. Since we were so far apart in age, he didn't experience a lot of consequences from that, except I think that science teacher was kind of wary of him when he eventually had her. That lie and the poor hamster still haunt me, though. Um, let’s see… I made out with Barney at a work party once, and… actually, I… I still feel bad about the time I charged MIT for a bunch of non-academic sightseeing excursions in Switzerland...”

Alyx’s jaw had practically hit the floor at that second revelation, and she’d dropped the handful of one-inch nails she’d just finished painstakingly separating from the other sizes. Gordon, meanwhile, pointedly avoided her gaze, either in order to ignore whatever emotions were playing across her face or to keep from losing his composure; it was hard to tell.

“Wait, wait, back up a bit,” she requested, certain she’d misheard something, or perhaps Gordon was pulling her chain.

With an infuriatingly straight face, Gordon continued, “Well, I mean, it was a huge integrity violation that could’ve gotten me in a lot of trouble if someone had audited my travel expense reports, but some of those museums were _technically_ related to science and—”

“Gordon!”

Somewhat sheepishly, he dropped the deadpan act. “I actually figured Barney would’ve already told you that story, but if you must know, we were both _very_ drunk and I remember very few details other than that I’m pretty sure it was his idea.” Gordon thought for a moment, still not quite meeting Alyx’s eyes. “Actually, maybe he never told you because he also barely remembers it. That is… certainly possible. He passed out before I did.”

“But… why?” she asked, still processing as she picked up the nails she had dropped.

Gordon shrugged, finally meeting her gaze. “Drunk people do weird things. Barney was a champion at getting me, specifically, to do weird things under the influence. It was probably a dare. Or maybe Barney just had a thing for older men?” The corners of his mouth twitched upwards, as though he was inclined to laugh at himself despite some lingering concern that sharing this information had been a mistake.

After several painfully long moments of awkward silence, Alyx tentatively asked one more follow-up question. “Is it weird that I’m not exactly into this, but I’m also not… _not_ turned on by it?”

“Yes, extremely,” Gordon replied, an amused chuckle softening his words and breaking the tension. “And before you ask, no, there will not be an encore performance. Besides, isn’t Barney a little old for you at this point?”

“Aren’t you technically _also_ little old for me?”

“Touché.”

It felt nice, Alyx realized, to joke about this. She still had no idea how or why Gordon had remained 27 years old for two decades, and she was pretty certain at this point that he didn’t actually know either, but they’d been tiptoeing around the subject the entire time they’d known each other as adults.

Maybe casually joking about it would help them both come to terms with it and stop her from having intrusive thoughts about the age gap at extremely inconvenient times, which had started to become a problem lately. Nothing kills the mood quite like remembering that the person you’re in bed with might still vividly remember what you were like as a kid. 

“So, in the interest of fairness—do I get to hear your deep, dark secrets?” Gordon asked, jolting Alyx out of her thoughts.

She thought for a moment before answering. She probably wouldn’t have told Gordon about any of these things, at least not until _much_ later in their relationship, under normal circumstances, but this whole afternoon had been so surreal already that it seemed there was no time like the present.

“I had a secret boyfriend when I was 16.” She figured she’d start with the worst part of her list. “In retrospect, dad probably knew about him, but I guess he was content to let me rebel and never intervened. Nothing much, uh, happened between us, in the grand scheme of things… but I wonder sometimes if our sneaking around was what got him killed.”

Gordon reflexively reached out and grabbed her hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. She could feel that he held his breath, waiting to hear the inevitably horrifying ending to this story.

Alyx decided to spare him from some of the details. “I don’t know exactly what happened to him, but I know he became a stalker.” She also knew that he—Marcus—had been picked up just outside Black Mesa East, almost certainly on his way to visit her.

“I’m sorry,” she heard Gordon whisper with genuine pain in his voice, and she forced a wave of emotion down, making a mental note to revisit it later. She still hadn’t completely come to terms with that loss. He squeezed her hand again, and she squeezed back.

“Beyond that,” she continued, suddenly desperate to move the conversation forward, “nothing too interesting or terrible. Actually, you’ll probably get a kick out of these.”

Gordon let go of her hand and snaked his arm around her waist, encouraging her to go on.

“I stole my dad’s prosthetic leg once, when I was like, 8. My memories are kind of fuzzy, but Barney can probably tell you the whole story. Dad was _really_ angry, but what could he do about it, you know? I’d stolen his entire freaking _leg._ And apparently I didn’t tell him where it was for almost a whole day.”

They shared a chuckle at that, and Alyx turned to look Gordon in the eyes before sharing her last secret. “I need you to swear that you will take this secret to your grave. Even if you are bribed, or tortured, nobody but you and I can _ever_ know about this. Understood?”

Gordon’s eyes went wide and he seemed genuinely freaked out by the intensity of her request, so she decided to dial it back a bit.

“Okay, breathe, it’s not really that big of a deal. Basically, you just have to swear that you will never let this slip in a way that it could get back to Dr. Kleiner.”

He sighed with relief and nodded, seemingly comfortable with that level of responsibility. Alyx leaned in even closer, in order to whisper this particularly juicy secret directly into his ear.

“Dr. Kleiner doesn’t know that Lamarr has actually been at least 3 different headcrabs. People kept freaking out and killing her on sight, so dad and I would just... pretend she’d gotten lost, de-beak another one, and then say we’d found her running around out back somewhere. I don’t think he suspects a thing.”

Alyx pulled away and Gordon blinked at her for a second before he absolutely lost it, doubling over at the waist in a fit of hysterical laughter. Alyx had seen him laugh before, of course, but this was something else entirely.

She supposed his reaction to the news of their deception was, perhaps, intensified by all of the other emotions this conversation had stirred up. Regardless, it was definitely reassuring to see that Gordon could still laugh like that after this emotional rollercoaster of a conversation.

She found herself rubbing small circles on his back to help him catch his breath, and it took him several minutes to calm down enough to look her in the eye without cracking up again.

“Thank you… so much… for that,” he gasped, breathing hard as his fit of laughter finally tapered off. Their organizational task long since forgotten, Alyx watched as he gently pushed some boxes out of the way in order to turn towards her and pull her close. He embraced her so that her back was pressed against his chest and he rested his head against hers as his breathing returned to normal.

“So, now we’re even, right?” she asked, and he pulled away to nod solemnly.

“We’ve had… such _different_ lives,” he said, slowly, as if he was still struggling to wrap his head around the sheer magnitude of the gap between their lived experiences and how to reconcile that with the fact that they were physically almost the same age.

Alyx froze, suddenly worried that she’d made a mistake by opening up this metaphorical can of worms. “Is that… does that change anything?” she asked.

Several seconds passed before Gordon replied, in that same slow, measured voice, “I don’t think so. Not unless you want it to. I… I want to learn about your life. I have so many unanswered questions. There’s so much I still don’t understand.”

Alyx nodded, not trusting herself to speak, although she felt exactly the same way. Gordon had grown up in a completely different world, and the thought of learning more about that world through the lens of his experiences was almost intoxicating.

Stories from before the Incident had always held a special appeal to her, since she’d only briefly inhabited that world before it had been brutally yanked out from under her, and she felt blessed to have become so close to perhaps the only person left on Earth who remembered the early 2000s like they were yesterday—because, to Gordon, they almost had been.

“I’m glad we’re in agreement,” Gordon whispered, his strong hands wrapping around her again and gently tracing patterns up and down her arms.

The intimacy and safety of the moment empowered Alyx to ask one more lingering question that had been floating around in the back of her mind ever since she and Gordon had first acknowledged their feelings for one another.

“Can I ask one more thing?” she asked, and she felt Gordon’s answering chuckle more than she heard it.

“You just did.”

Alyx rolled her eyes and took a deep breath. “Okay, so it’s common knowledge that you knew me, or at least knew _of_ me, when I was a little kid. But I’ve been dying to know, what do you actually remember about me from back then?”

She heard Gordon sigh deeply, and he brought one of his hands up to his face, possibly to pinch the bridge of his nose as he often did when uncomfortable. She couldn’t quite bring herself to turn around and face him.

“You don’t have to—”

“No, it’s fine,” Gordon responded, cutting her off before she could finish taking the question back. “I kind of figured this was coming, eventually. I’ll answer it, but you may have to work extra hard to make me forget this conversation later. Deal?”

Alyx giggled, thankful that Gordon hadn’t been completely blindsided by her question and that he had a sense of humor about the whole thing. “Deal.”

After taking a moment to collect his thoughts, Gordon admitted, “I had quite a few _very_ brief interactions with you. Your dad typically invited me over for dinner at least once a week—I think he was concerned that I was going to die of malnutrition or develop scurvy otherwise, since I was still eating like a grad student—and you were usually around. I always said hi, to be polite… but I was never very comfortable around kids.”

“I did babysit you once, though,” he continued, after a short pause. “Just a few weeks before the Incident. Barney was supposed to do it, but he called me up at the last minute and begged me to take over.”

Alyx nodded; she already knew that Barney had been her family’s go-to babysitter, both before and after the disaster at Black Mesa. He was surprisingly good with kids, despite his reputation for drinking a bit too much and not taking his day job as seriously as his superiors would’ve liked. 

“Your mom was _not_ pleased when I showed up instead of Barney, to say the least. Honestly… I don’t think she liked me that much. Anyway, your dad convinced her that I could probably manage to keep you from hurting yourself or destroying anything for few hours and it was too late to find a replacement, so they wrote out some instructions and told me to do my best.”

Alyx figured it hadn’t yet sunk in for Gordon how weird it was for him to be telling this story while holding her in his arms, but she certainly wasn’t going to point that out to him. She needed to know how this story ended.

When she realized he’d fallen quiet, she prompted him to continue. “So, obviously I survived, but how was it?”

“Oh, your parents weren’t lying when they said you were an easy kid. I fed you dinner, I put on a movie, you fell asleep halfway through it, so I, uh, carried you to bed and tucked you in before I finished the movie by myself.” Alyx felt Gordon’s chest rumble as he started to laugh.

“What?” she asked. “What part of that is funny?”

“Your mom was thrilled that I’d kept you alive and gotten you to sleep on time, but your dad was _furious_ that I’d let you watch Star Trek V.” Gordon paused to regain his composure. “That was the movie I’d picked. I’d seen the first four Star Trek movies and they were pretty good and mostly appropriate for children, so I figured this was a good opportunity to watch the fifth one, since the VHS was right there in the living room.”

Much to Alyx’s frustration, Gordon left off there, even though she still had questions. 

“Soooo… was it inappropriate for kids, or something?” Alyx definitely appreciated the irony in the thought of her father having been upset about an inappropriate movie, mere weeks before her entire life had turned into an R-rated horror film. 

Gordon shrugged. “Not exactly… I mean, there was some violence, but it was pretty tame stuff. It was mostly just an objectively not-very-good movie. I think your dad was more concerned about my taste than the possibility that I’d scarred you for life.”

He thought for a moment before continuing, “Actually, there was, um, there was this one cat lady in it who was very… well-endowed.” Gordon moved his hands from where they'd been resting at her waist to gesture vaguely around her general chest area, seemingly unwilling to say the word “breasts.”

“Oh my God, that was _you?”_ A long-repressed memory hit with full force and Alyx howled with laughter, feeling weirdly satisfied that she _did_ , in fact, have a concrete memory of something related to Gordon from childhood. “I remember absolutely _nothing_ from that encounter except that cat lady with three boobs. That image haunted me for a while, honestly.”

Gordon soon joined in, once again, with his own hysterical laughter. “I am... so… sorry,” he choked out between guffaws. As he recovered, he pushed his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose and marveled, almost incredulously, “Huh… turns out I actually did scar you for life.”

A few minutes passed and their laughter eventually died down, giving way to a comfortable silence.

“What are you thinking about?” Alyx asked, leaning back into Gordon’s chest and placing her hands over his where they were now splayed across her stomach.

“I'm trying to remember why I ended up babysitting you that night,” he replied, his tone suggesting he was lost in his memories again.

A beat later, he added, “And actually, I think it just hit me. That was the night Barney proposed to Lauren. I was so excited to tell him that I’d successfully babysat you and earned some brownie points with your mom, but then he one-upped me.”

Alyx felt that now-familiar combination of confusion and dread from earlier wash over her body again.

 _‘Who the hell is Lauren?’_ she thought, desperate and perhaps a little bit angry.

This omission somehow felt more personal. Barney had been engaged? He’d never said anything about it for twenty years? Other people—at the very least, her father and Dr. Kleiner—had most likely known this and also hadn’t said anything? Who was Lauren, and what had happened to her or to Barney to make him keep her a secret for so long?

“You okay?” she heard Gordon ask, his concerned voice breaking through her brain fog.

“Gordon,” Alyx whispered, unable to pretend that she knew who he was talking about no matter how much she wanted to avoid dropping another bombshell, “who was Lauren?”

She felt a sense of déjà vu as Gordon once again went completely still, but while his anger at her confusion about John had been brief, his body language suggested that he was fixating on that emotion this time around. 

After several agonizingly long moments of complete silence and stillness, she felt Gordon’s shoulders start to shake and his breathing picked up to a point where she was worried that he would hyperventilate.

As she started to turn around to comfort him, he abruptly pushed her away, disentangling their limbs and scrambling to his feet. With no regard whatsoever for the materials they had spent the better part of an hour sorting into neat little piles, Gordon made a beeline for the door. 

Stunned, Alyx stood up, prepared to chase after him. Before her feet could catch up with her thoughts, Gordon stopped, turned, and looked her dead in the eyes.

“ _Do not_ follow me,” he instructed in a low, forceful voice, before turning away and storming out of the shed, slamming the door behind him.

Another few seconds passed before Alyx’s emotions caught up to her, and she found herself blinking back tears. She still considered going after Gordon, despite his warning, but something in the back of her mind told her there was nothing she could do for him at the moment.

Their whole exchange had clearly touched a nerve, or perhaps several, and she knew she didn’t have the answers that Gordon was undoubtedly searching for. She found herself wishing, with the benefit—or curse—of hindsight, she hadn’t brought all of this up in the first place.

Slowly, mechanically, she started picking up the piles of screws and wires and electrical components and placing them back into random boxes. Someone else would have to deal with this later; it just didn't seem important anymore. 

As she cleared the floor, Alyx thought back to her breakfast conversation with Barney, which now felt as if it had taken place more than just a few hours ago. He’d been one of her closest friends for over two decades, and she suddenly found herself questioning whether she really knew him at all.

Everyone in the Resistance tended to be pretty close-lipped about their pasts, which was understandable, but Barney had answered all of her questions about her mother, and Gordon, and even his own history without hesitation. He’d never let on that he was lying by omission by pretending he hadn’t lost anyone special or simply shrugging when she’d once asked what had happened to Gordon’s family after he'd disappeared.

And, perhaps most infuriatingly, she couldn’t question Barney directly, since he was currently somewhere in the Outlands, preparing to fight another wave of trans-human soldiers and whatever other horrors the Combine had in store for the rebel troops. She felt terrible for momentarily suspending her concern about his well-being in favor of fantasizing about confronting him the second he returned, but what choice had he left her?

 _‘How are we going to move on from this?’_ she thought with despair, before shelving the last box and heading back to the base to check on Gordon. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have wanted to write some of these exchanges for a LONG time. There's so much potential for both humor and conflict between these characters, given their circumstances, which is one of my favorite things about the series. Hopefully I didn't overdo it, and dialogue tips are welcome because dang, that was a lot.


	4. Chapter 4

Gordon had lost track of how long he’d been lying in bed, staring blankly at the ceiling as his thoughts rushed a mile a minute. Physically, he was exhausted from his panic attack and subsequent crying spell. He’d taken a shower at some point; the most noticeable indicator that time had passed since then was his hair, which had long since dried and was sticking up in all directions where he’d repeatedly run his fingers through it in a pathetic attempt at self-soothing. 

He replayed the events of the last few hours over and over in his head, unable to stop himself from ruminating. It was just his luck that something like this would come out of left field and render his coping mechanisms practically useless, just as he’d started to allow himself to believe that he was finally getting a handle on his anxiety. 

Learning that his little brother had been virtually lost to history had felt like a sucker punch to the gut, but he’d almost been able to justify that with logic once he’d recovered from the initial shock. Dr. Kleiner had only met John once or twice, when he’d attended MIT’s family weekend festivities, and it was entirely possible that his notoriously absentminded mentor had simply forgotten about his brother in the course of dealing with much more pressing matters. That would certainly be understandable.

Barney was the only other one of his Black Mesa colleagues who had actually spoken to John, as he’d occasionally answered Gordon’s phone calls when he’d stayed over to nurse him through a hangover. Barney probably remembered John, but perhaps he wouldn’t have volunteered information about Gordon’s personal life unless explicitly asked to do so.

Or, maybe Barney had thought he was protecting John by allowing him to fade into obscurity, to save him from being pulled into whatever mess Gordon had found himself trapped in. That thought had allowed Gordon to forgive Barney, at least temporarily, until his conversation with Alyx had taken another dark turn.

The subsequent revelation that Barney had presumably never told a soul about Lauren since the Incident had been harder to explain away and somehow hurt even worse; it felt more like being hit in the face with a brick, punched in the gut, and trampled by antlions simultaneously.

If Barney hadn’t told Alyx about her, it was a safe bet that he hadn’t told _anyone._ Those two talked about _everything_. 

Gordon still had the presence of mind to feel conflicted about his next train of thought, but alas, his conscience-stricken reaction failed to stop it in its tracks: Post-apocalyptic circumstances aside, Alyx had been so _lucky_ to grow up with Barney around. Although Gordon would never admit this out loud, he sometimes felt jealous of the closeness she shared with his old friend.

He’d only known the former security guard for a little over a year before everything had gone to hell, and it hurt to think about the time they had lost, especially when he watched Alyx and Barney interact. Their effortless conversational shorthand, goofy traditions, and endless inside jokes served as constant reminders that she had known Barney for almost all of her twenty-four years of life, including the twenty years that Gordon himself would never get back. 

Gordon hadn’t been around to keep John’s memory alive, but Barney had been surrounded by people who loved him, including Alyx. Granted, he’d been on his own for periodic long stretches of time due to his Civil Protection service, but he had a found family to call home who would’ve helped him grieve for Lauren.

Why hadn’t Barney taken advantage of that? Didn't he know how lucky he was?

Gordon felt another sharp pang of nostalgia mixed with grief as his thoughts turned back to Lauren. He had really liked Barney's fiancée, and the feeling had been mutual. He'd always appreciated how she'd never seemed to mind how often he'd ‘third-wheeled’ her dates with Barney, before they had become good friends in their own right.

In many ways, Lauren had been Barney’s polar opposite, but in such a way that they’d perfectly balanced each other out. Gordon couldn't begin to imagine how Barney had managed to survive after losing his anchoring counterweight. 

The Barney he remembered was a goofball with a heart of gold who could take things quite seriously when a situation called for it; Lauren, on the other hand, had been outwardly serious and buttoned-up, belying the fact that she'd had a fantastic sense of humor lurking just below the surface.

Not to mention, Barney was good-looking in an almost roguish sort of way and had grown up poor in rural Alabama, whereas Lauren had been more stereotypically beautiful, with short brown hair that framed her petite features and impeccable fashion sense that she'd certainly inherited from her parents, a couple of rich New York lawyers. They hadn’t liked Barney very much, which Gordon suspected had only increased his appeal in Lauren’s eyes.

She’d had quite a rebellious streak.

Gordon would have been the best man at their wedding. He remembered how his heart had swelled with pride when Barney had asked him to assume the role, until he’d belatedly realized that he would have to give a toast. Barney had reassured him that he had a plan in case that kind of deeply emotional public speaking proved to be too much for Gordon the day of the event.

“No,” Barney had firmly insisted when Gordon had offered to step down and allow the role to be filled by someone who could reliably speak to large crowds of strangers about topics besides theoretical physics. “There’s nobody else we’d rather have in the party. We both want you there.”

These memories kept Gordon from feeling self-conscious about the intensity of his grief for his best friend’s fiancée. His friendship with Lauren had been completely platonic, but it had been special and fulfilling nonetheless. 

The couple had made sure to include space for Gordon as they’d started to build a life together, and Barney had often joked that he would make a great eccentric pseudo-uncle or godparent for their kids. It had been a nice thought, in spite of the accompanying unspoken assumption that Gordon would likely be single for the foreseeable future and thus would experience parenthood vicariously through his friends instead of having kids of his own.

He would have loved them, the kids Barney and Lauren had never had… that would’ve come after the wedding that had never taken place... 

When Alyx had confirmed his worst suspicions and admitted that Lauren, like John, was a completely foreign abstraction to her, Gordon had felt the mother of all panic attacks coming on. He’d run away— _pushed her away_ —because he didn’t want her to see him break down, and he’d just barely made it to his room before his legs had buckled underneath him.

He tensed as he recalled the painfully fresh details of his panic attack.

As he’d curled up in fetal position on the floor—heart pounding, chills wracking his body, chest so tight he was afraid he would no longer be able to breathe—Gordon had caught a fleeting glimpse of _him._ The man in the blue suit had appeared in his field of vision, just briefly.

“Yessss…” he’d hissed, his raspy and unnatural voice cutting through Gordon’s racing thoughts and echoing in his head. “It is most… unfortunate.” The man had smirked, as if he knew something that Gordon did not, and straightened his tie before he'd disappeared as quickly as he had arrived.

A split second before the man had faded from Gordon’s view, he’d flashed one last expression that Gordon might’ve almost mistaken for sympathy, if he hadn’t known better.

Gordon’s last coherent thought for a while had been a self-deprecating one: If the man in the blue suit had to make an appearance to tell him to get a grip, he must _really_ be losing it. It was at that point that the first anticipated wave of anxiety-induced terror had washed over him, scrambling his thoughts. He’d closed his eyes and pulled his knees closer to his chest to ride it out.

After about ten minutes that had felt more like ten hours, Gordon’s panic attack had subsided, and his fear and anxiety had morphed into intense, raw grief. He’d sobbed pitifully on the floor until he had run out of tears, before he'd forced himself to get up and take a shower to get the snot out of his beard and re-hydrate before he passed out. 

The nearly-blisteringly hot shower had cleansed his body, but it hadn’t done much to soothe his soul. After hastily giving his face and body a once-over with a soapy washcloth, he'd slumped down on the floor of the shower, unable to trust his legs to continue holding him upright. He wasn't sure how long he'd zoned out, but he hadn't snapped out of it until the water had started to run cold. 

He’d managed to haul himself out of the shower, somehow. Still sopping wet, he'd thrown on a t-shirt and a pair of boxers before collapsing onto his bed, where he’d remained, nearly motionless, as the setting sun had cast long shadows across the room and before eventually leaving him alone in near-darkness.

It was difficult, in some ways, to grieve for people whose deaths he knew nothing about, and who might—for all he knew—still be alive somewhere. If not as themselves, then as—

No, he wouldn’t allow himself to think about that possibility. Alyx’s story about her old boyfriend was still fresh on his mind.

What on Earth… or Xen, or wherever… had happened to them?

Gordon felt guilty, too, about how he had barely spared a thought for his own missing loved ones or those his closest friends had lost since he’d returned to White Forest from the _Borealis_ mission.

He supposed he’d been distracted by his much more immediate, salient grief for Eli, but he couldn’t help but wonder if he was a bad son… a bad brother… a bad friend… for not thinking more about the most important figures in his former life from the second he'd woken up on that train to City 17. 

From a logical and scientific perspective, Gordon knew his brain had repressed those memories to allow him to survive during those initial weeks of endless, extreme stress and danger, but still, that didn’t excuse the messed-up priorities he'd established in the time since things had calmed down.

Here he was, throwing himself into a new relationship and playing scientist like he didn’t have a care in the world, while John and Lauren and so many others were… _gone_.

Gordon was jarred out of his thoughts by a tentative knock on his door. It took an enormous amount of strength for him to roll his heavy body over and glance at the clock on his nightstand: 8:53 P.M. Fairly late.

It was probably Alyx. He’d also missed dinner.

He sighed as he fumbled for his glasses, which he’d dropped somewhere on the bed when he’d crashed after his shower. He felt terrible for how he’d left Alyx, and he was a bit surprised that she wanted anything to do with him after that display. Open communication had been a core tenet of their developing relationship, aside from their mutual avoidance of certain topics from their pasts, and he’d thrown all of that out the window.

Then again, it was possible that she wasn’t here for him at all. Most of her stuff had slowly migrated into his room over the course of the last few weeks, so perhaps she was just here for a change of clothes or to pick up her toothbrush.

Having finally located his glasses, Gordon slid them on and forced himself to roll out of bed, grunting with the effort. Stiffly, he walked over to the door and opened it with trepidation.

As he’d expected, he found himself face-to-face with Alyx, and he kept his distance as she looked him over from head to toe, slowly taking in his mussed hair, his red-rimmed eyes, and the marks on his arms where he’d dug his own fingernails into them during the throes of his panic attack. She met his gaze before stepping into the moonlit room and enveloping him in a hug, kicking the door closed behind her.

God, he did not deserve her. He returned the embrace, burying his face in her hair and whispering, “I’m sorry, so sorry… so sorry...” He was surprised to find that he was still physically capable of speech, in light of everything that had transpired. 

When she broke away, he noticed that her eyes were also puffy from crying and felt another pang of guilt. For the time being, however, she’d adopted that no-nonsense demeanor that she’d often employed in combat when he had wanted to press on through a difficult mission, but she had known better and insisted that they stop to take care of their injuries.

“Come on,” she murmured. “Let’s get you into bed. You need to rest.” She grabbed his arm and led him back to bed, tucking him in and taking care to set his glasses gently on the nightstand.

Alyx didn’t join him under the covers, choosing instead to perch on the edge of the mattress as she ran her fingers through his hair, perhaps in an attempt to smooth it down. After a moment, Gordon realized that she was still wearing the same dusty clothes from earlier.

As if she’d heard his thoughts, Alyx announced, “I’m going to go take a quick shower. You gonna be okay for a few minutes?”

He nodded, then felt suddenly ashamed. “There’s no hot water left.”

A slight smile played at the corners of her lips.

“So I’ve heard.”

Alyx leaned forward to kiss his forehead before she left his side and disappeared through the door on the opposite wall.

Alone once again, Gordon found that he felt calmer now, though he still couldn’t shake the feeling that some part of his subconscious had just barely managed to contain all that grief and guilt, and it would inevitably come flooding out again if he pushed himself too hard.

He laid on his back, closed his eyes, and focused on taking long, deep breaths to slow his heart rate. Alyx had taught him that trick the first time she'd comforted him in the aftermath of one of his all-too-frequent nightmares.

A few minutes later, Alyx re-emerged from the bathroom, throwing on a pair of shorts and one of Gordon’s discarded shirts before climbing into bed next to him and slinging an arm across his waist as she settled in.

“You’re freezing,” he murmured, covering her hand that had come to rest at his hip with his.

“Some asshole used up all the hot water,” she replied matter-of-factly, with the slightest lilt of humor in her voice, before pressing a kiss to his shoulder.

Gordon turned his head to look at his partner, struck once again by her incredible ability to remain calm and even tell jokes in the face of all sorts of indignities, including his reprehensible behavior that afternoon.

“I’m sorry I—”

She pressed a finger to his lips, cutting him off.

“Panic attack, right?"

He nodded, relieved that she'd somehow understood why he had left her so suddenly.

"I’ll admit… I was kind of hurt at first," Alyx explained, "but then I remembered a story Barney told me recently… about another time you reacted to bad news like that, and I figured you just needed some space. Once I saw that you’d made it back here in one piece, I assumed you wanted to be left alone for a while.”

She really was a saint. “Thanks,” he whispered, his voice breaking. He’d forgotten that Barney had seen him through one of these episodes, all those years ago, though now he couldn’t remember what had triggered that one.

_Barney…_

Gordon tensed, and he felt Alyx do the same, suggesting that she was having similar thoughts. They laid next to each other in silence, perfectly still, for several long moments before Alyx spoke up.

“I’m kind of mad at him. Is that… should I feel bad about that?”

Gordon sighed. “I don’t know, but I am too… so I guess we can feel bad together?”

“Should we talk to him when he gets back?” Alyx asked, hesitation evident in her voice as if she was second-guessing whether or not she actually wanted to confront her friend about something that would almost certainly rip open a very painful old wound.

“Let me talk to him,” Gordon offered. “I know you two are… probably closer than we are at this point, but you didn’t know…” He trailed off, unable to bring himself to say Lauren’s name.

Alyx traced a pattern up and down Gordon’s chest and shifted so that her head was resting against his shoulder. He wiggled his arm out from underneath her to support her back, allowing her to relax into the space next to his body.

“What was she like?” Alyx whispered. “I keep trying to imagine Barney being in love with someone, and I’m coming up blank.”

“She was…” Gordon paused, remembering Lauren’s laugh, her habit of affectionately calling him ‘Poindexter’ despite his objections, her fondness for old-fashioned jazz music, the way Barney’s face would light up when he registered her presence in a room…

“She’s not my story to tell,” he answered, finally.

Alyx sighed and burrowed further into the crook of his neck. Gordon felt conflicted, as he wanted to offer her _something_... but if Barney had wanted to keep Lauren a secret, he felt compelled to respect his friend’s wishes as best he could, at least until they'd had a chance to talk about it.

It was possible that he’d already irreparably damaged his relationships with both Alyx and Barney—not to mention their friendship with each other—by mentioning Lauren in the first place; he wasn’t going to risk making the situation worse.

“You’d have liked her,” he said, after a beat. That was almost certainly true.

Wordlessly, Alyx reached for his opposite arm and rolled over, silently asking him to spoon her. Gordon complied, pulling her against his chest and holding onto to her as if their lives depended on it.

Gordon knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep for a while, but he remained still and quiet, assuming that was what Alyx had in mind. However, she surprised him by breaking the silence again.

“You feel guilty, don’t you?”

Hot tears suddenly threatened to escape again, and Gordon could only nod in response. Somehow, Alyx always seemed to know what was going on in his head, sometimes before he’d even made sense of it himself.

She squeezed his hand as she responded emphatically, “You can’t let yourself think that way, Gordon. This is all… bigger than any one person. It’s not your fault this happened, it’s not your fault that everyone decided to cope with this by just… _lying to each other’s faces for twenty years,_ and it’s not your fault that you did what you had to do to survive.”

That dam that was just barely holding Gordon’s emotions captive in some remote part of his brain was threatening to burst. In a last-ditch effort to keep them in check, he flipped Alyx over and captured her lips in a frantic, sloppy kiss, which she returned without hesitation.

She pressed into him, intertwining their legs and reaching for the hem of his shirt without breaking the kiss. They gasped when they finally separated, but neither made a move to back down from what they had started. 

“Make me forget,” Gordon whispered in desperation, his voice breaking again.

Alyx nodded, scanning his face for any cue to suggest that she should stop. Finding none, she initiated another searing kiss, determined to fulfill his request.

* * *

Hours later, Gordon found himself suddenly awakened by the sensation of someone frantically shaking his shoulder. As the mental fog from his dreamless sleep slowly faded, he became aware of a commotion in the hallway outside the room.

“Come on, Gordon,” Alyx directed, shaking him again. “It sounds like they need people out there.”

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Gordon rolled out of bed, grabbed his glasses, and stumbled as he searched the dark room for a pair of pants. He was grateful when he felt Alyx shove a bundle of fabric into his hands, and he busied himself with getting dressed, attempting to swallow his growing panic.

His heart was in his throat; he still wasn’t sure what was going on, but whatever it was, it definitely wasn’t good.

Slowly, he began to make out the shouts coming from the hallway.

“We’ve got wounded!”

“That one can wait!”

“A trap! It was a fucking trap!”

“Has anyone found Dr. Gold yet?”

“This one’s gonna need at least 3 units!”

Gordon finished pulling his t-shirt on over his head and followed Alyx out the door, jogging to keep up as she made a beeline for the lobby of the base.

They both arrived just in time to watch a group of panicked rebels, several of whom were still wearing their blood-spattered tactical gear, pull an occupied stretcher out of the back of a van.

Barney Calhoun’s unconscious form, bloodied and battered, was unmistakable.

Frozen in place, Gordon registered a few words as medical staff descended upon the stretcher. _Shock… shrapnel… dropping… pneumothorax?..._

 _‘No,’_ he thought, overcome by a feeling of dread as the events of the previous afternoon came flooding back into his memory. _‘No, no, no, no…’_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With the holidays coming up, I'm not likely to have another opportunity to sit down and write for at least a couple of weeks. I went ahead and uploaded the first four chapters of this in an effort to hold myself accountable to finish the rest soon. Sorry about the cliffhanger, and happy holidays!


	5. Chapter 5

Gordon sat up sharply as he registered the sound of his bedroom door opening and closing behind him. His hand, which had previously been furiously scribbling notes, stilled. A quick glance at the window confirmed that it was evening already, and this interruption could only mean that Alyx was ready to turn in for the night. 

How had he let another day pass by so quickly? He felt like he'd only just gotten started, and now he was out of time.

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair before composing himself. In a matter of seconds, he consciously replaced his frustrated expression with one of empathy and affection, straightened his glasses, and turned around to greet his partner. 

This was their routine now. Gordon was free to spend the daylight hours holed up in his room, brooding and strategizing, since Dr. Kleiner had kindly but firmly placed him on indefinite suspension from the lab. In the evenings, however, he did his best to compartmentalize so he could focus on taking care of Alyx.

He felt he owed her that much, at the very least, after everything that had happened. 

_How is he?_ he wanted to ask, but the question died on his lips as he took in Alyx’s haggard expression. Her features were etched with deep worry lines and she seemed unwilling to look directly at him, offering no more than a terse nod of acknowledgement as she kicked off her boots and removed her headband.

Gordon started to stand, in preparation to offer a hug or some other physical form of comfort, but she shook her head and gestured for him to stay put. 

“Shower,” she muttered, flashing him a brief apologetic glance as she headed towards the bathroom. 

Gordon nodded in understanding and sank back down into his desk chair. This was the third day in a row that Alyx had insisted on showering immediately after returning to their room for the evening. He assumed she wanted to wash away the lingering antiseptic smell of the medical bay, and he didn’t blame her. That smell triggered nothing but bad memories for both of them.

The second he heard the bathroom door close, Gordon returned his attention to the collection of notes strewn across his desk. As he skimmed over the pages, hoping to glean some valuable insight that he could later mull over while Alyx slept, he instead found himself groaning in exasperation.

He’d switched to drafting potential confrontation scenarios on paper after he’d found himself struggling to keep track of them in his mind. There were so many potential outcomes to map… so many variables to consider… so many unknowns…

Writing it all down had seemed, at some earlier point, like the best possible way to compare his options before settling on a concrete plan of approach. However, as he looked over what he had produced with fresh eyes, Gordon felt profoundly ridiculous. How had he managed to let himself waste so much time trying to choreograph a complex human interaction as if it were a simple scientific experiment? 

He pounded a fist on his desk out of sheer frustration. He’d had had five days to strategize about how best to go about potentially re-traumatizing one of his oldest friends, and all he had to show for it was a mountain of absolutely useless, rambling notes and a rapidly compounding sense of dread.

Gordon gathered up the pages of nonsense and shoved them into his bottom desk drawer, carefully burying them under some lab notes and his trusty crowbar. Alyx didn’t need to see this. The last thing she needed was to worry that he was losing his mind, on top of everything else.

White Forest’s ancient plumbing rumbled and groaned as Alyx turned off the shower, reminding Gordon that it was almost time to attend to more pressing responsibilities.

He kicked the drawer shut, set his glasses on the nightstand, climbed into bed—fully clothed, as was his habit now that he couldn’t shake the feeling that he might be needed elsewhere at any moment—and composed himself once again, pushing his disappointment and irritation at himself aside in order to make room for positive thoughts. 

A split second after he finished plastering on a neutral, pleasant expression, Alyx emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in a towel. She continued to avoid eye contact as she got dressed, and Gordon’s stomach dropped as he noted that she still looked distraught. 

He fought against the urge to panic as nightmare scenarios began to play through his head. Had the medics missed something? Had Barney not been so lucky after all? His thoughts flashed back to his brief encounter with the man in the suit, the night Barney had been injured. What else did the man know that he didn’t? 

Despite his racing thoughts, Gordon carefully maintained his mask of calm as he pulled back the covers, inviting Alyx to join him for some much-needed rest.

She pulled the cord on his desk lamp, leaving them in complete darkness save for a small beam of moonlight, as she fumbled her way over to the bed. Before he could reach for her, she flopped onto the mattress, rolled over to face him, and curled up into a ball with her face buried in his shirt.

He held his breath, waiting for her tears, but they never came. She hadn’t cried since that first night, in fact, and this quiet strength was precisely why Alyx had taken on the responsibility of visiting Barney in the infirmary while Gordon isolated himself like the coward that he was. 

Gordon continued to oblige his partner’s unspoken request for silence as he wrapped his arms around her. He held Alyx close and gently stroked her hair for what felt like an eternity, until he absolutely couldn’t handle the suspense any longer.

“How is he?” he asked softly, squeezing her a little more tightly as he braced himself for bad news.

Gordon was caught off guard when he heard her chuckle in response. The sound wasn’t as warm as he’d come to expect from her, but it was definitely a laugh.

“He keeps asking the nurses to give him beer and he says the casts itch like hell.”

Ah, that sounded like the Barney he remembered. “So, he’s feeling better?” he prompted, heart pounding as he waited for the other shoe to drop. 

He felt her answering sigh more than he heard it. “Yep, he’s feeling better,” she mumbled into his chest, still sounding uncharacteristically despondent.

A moment later, she turned to face him, and his stomach dropped again as they locked eyes for the first time that night. The circles and lines from exhaustion and worry were par for the course at this point, but a new flicker of remorse in her eyes betrayed the truth that she had been so desperate to conceal.

“He knows something’s up,” Alyx whispered, confirming Gordon’s fears. “I’m sorry. I… it was different when he was sleeping most of the time, but now that he’s awake and talking, I just can’t… act like I don’t _know,_ you know? I told him I was just worried about him… and you, of course, but I don’t think he’s buying it anymore.” She took a breath and dropped her gaze. “I can’t look him in the eye. I just _can’t_.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Gordon murmured, fighting to keep his voice steady despite his growing sense of apprehension. He noticed that she was blinking back tears and he began to rub her back in small circles, hoping to reassure her while he lost himself in his thoughts. 

None of this was her fault. It was all his. He squeezed his eyes shut as he felt his carefully suppressed guilt threatening to bubble to the surface. _He should’ve known better._

Every single time he had tried to ask Barney about the past since he'd gotten his voice back, his old friend had redirected the conversation to a safer topic—typically, one that he could crack jokes about—so smoothly that Gordon often failed to notice the subject change until much later, at which point Barney was inevitably nowhere to be found. 

The handful of times he had swallowed his pride and sought comfort from Barney in the aftermath of some of his most vivid nightmares, before Alyx had taken over that role, Gordon had always been too exhausted, or too anxious, or too terrified to initiate a coherent conversation. Barney, on his part, had always seemed perfectly content to offer no more than silent gestures of reassurance, and he’d always disappeared before morning. 

Somehow, it had never occurred to Gordon, until it was already far too late, that Barney might have been hiding something with his silence and deflection. Only now, with the benefit of hindsight, did he understand that although Barney had a reputation for being surprisingly open about his past, his own sudden return had posed a threat to the version of the truth that Barney had carefully constructed and clung to for so many long years. 

And then of course, despite an overabundance of heavily insinuated warnings to tread lightly when speaking about the past, Gordon had still managed to thoughtlessly, carelessly, _stupidly_ open Pandora’s box.

He was relieved when Alyx broke the heavy silence before he could continue further down that dangerous path of regret and self-loathing.

“He keeps asking about you, too. That’s my fault… I think I gave him too many details with our cover story and now he’s worried that you’ve turned into a complete basket case.”

 _‘I mean, he’s not far off,’_ Gordon thought. He elected not to voice the self-deprecating crack out loud as he repressed a twinge of guilt about his decision to pull the ‘mental health crisis’ card to avoid visiting Barney in the infirmary.

Instead, he replied once again, “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

Alyx merely sighed in response before shifting slightly, so that she was no longer pressed against him. 

Abruptly, Gordon stilled his hands as he realized he’d been tracing the same pattern up and down her back for quite some time while he’d been ruminating.

He was relieved when he heard Alyx chuckle softly, as she often did when he caught himself fidgeting around her, and the sound dispelled some of the tension that blanketed the room. Gordon shifted to allow her to roll over onto her other side and slid an arm around her waist, silently thankful that she could no longer see his face as he processed the implications of her report. 

Initially, he’d hoped to find a way to avoid having to confront Barney about his secret, but it had quickly become apparent that he couldn’t ask Alyx to hide the fact that she knew about Lauren forever.

It was clear that she felt understandably confused and perhaps somewhat betrayed by the revelation that Barney had been keeping secrets from her, and it was only a matter of time before she reached a breaking point. A confrontation between the two would undoubtedly be a classic case of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, and Gordon had absolutely no desire to see that play out. 

He knew he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he simply stood by and let them have a massive falling out after two decades of friendship because of a stupid mistake he had made. Alyx and Barney needed each other far more, he reasoned, than either of them needed him. 

There was only one viable course of action, then. He would come clean, take the blame, and if things went extraordinarily well, perhaps at least one of them would still be able to look him in the eye after the dust had settled.

And if not… he’d get by, somehow.

“Can you talk to him soon?” Alyx asked, almost as if on cue. The desperation in her voice told Gordon that he could no longer afford to put this off. “I don’t think—I can’t face him again. He’s just so _damn_ …” she trailed off, seemingly unable to find the right words to describe a specific kind of frustration that he didn’t quite understand. 

“Yeah,” Gordon whispered, finally accepting his fate. “I will. Tomorrow.”

Alyx turned to face him again and scrutinized him intently, clearly trying to gauge how he was feeling about the terrible responsibility he had taken on. He purposely hadn’t shared much about his plan of approach with her, as he felt that this mess that he’d created was his alone to clean up.

“How are you feeling? Can I do anything to help? I could go with you, or—”

“No,” Gordon cut her off, shaking his head. This was not the first time they’d had this conversation, and his stance hadn’t changed. “I need to talk to him myself.” He paused, gathering the strength to hopefully project a believable air of confidence. “I’ll be okay. Come on, get some sleep.”

As soon as he uttered the word “sleep,” Alyx yawned and then shot him a sheepish half-smile as she reluctantly acknowledged her own exhaustion. Gordon kissed her forehead before reluctantly disentangling their limbs as he settled in for another long night of anxious thoughts and terrible dreams.

He was caught off guard, for the second time that night, when Alyx motioned for him to roll over onto his other side.

He considered protesting, but then again… if this made Alyx feel better in some way, he certainly wasn’t going to discourage her. He complied with her request and let her spoon him, smiling despite his unease as she wrapped an arm around his torso and snuggled into the space behind his shoulders.

“Goodnight,” she whispered, sounding almost like herself for a brief, fleeting instant.

“G’night,” he murmured in response. _I love you_ , he nearly added, but he swallowed the words before they could slip past his lips. He knew, deep down, that the timing simply wasn’t right.

As soon he could be sure that everything was truly okay between Alyx and Barney, and as soon as he could speak freely about his past without fear of hurting anyone, and as soon as this weird power imbalance in their relationship had finally been neutralized… then, Gordon hoped, he would have plenty of opportunities to tell Alyx how much he loved her. 

And if things turned out differently… he’d find a way to live with that. He squeezed his eyes shut, hoping to banish that train of thought without alerting Alyx to his distress.

She’d been so strong through all of this. The least he could do now was to let her sleep.

He reached for her hand and brought it up to rest near his chest, clinging to her for strength as best he could when she was wrapped around his back like a protective shell. Slowly, he loosened his grip as exhaustion overtook him, and he fell into a fitful sleep.

* * *

The next morning, Gordon found himself hovering anxiously outside the door to Barney’s room in the infirmary as he tried to work up the courage to go inside.

He had finally accepted that there was no way to predict how this was going to go, but that didn’t make him feel any more confident about the harsh reality that he was going to have to wing it. Gordon Freeman, PhD, was pretty sure he’d never _winged_ anything in his life. At least, not while sober. 

In lieu of a script, Gordon had developed a mantra, which he’d mentally repeated at least a thousand times since he’d forced himself out of bed a couple hours earlier: _‘Don’t get defensive. Let him be angry. Don’t cry. Don’t let him blame Alyx.'_ Even if everything went completely pear-shaped, he figured he could manage to remember four things. 

Barney’s medical file was attached to a clipboard hanging on a nail next to the door, and Gordon pulled it down and flipped through it, stalling for time. _‘I guess nobody gives a damn about HIPAA anymore, huh?’_ he mused to himself, almost chuckling at the absurdity of the thought in this day and age.

Even though Gordon had already heard about Barney’s injuries from Dr. Gold and he’d received daily updates from Alyx, everything still hadn’t quite felt completely real until he read the diagnoses from the chart himself, slowly decoding the scrawled medical jargon as he scanned the pages.

_Hypovolemic shock. Fractured left forearm. Three broken ribs. Severe laceration, right thigh. Mild concussion. Various shrapnel wounds. Confusion, dizziness, fatigue._

The words themselves seemed so simple and clean in comparison to Barney’s actual injuries. Gordon still vividly remembered how disoriented his friend had been as he’d drifted in and out of consciousness during triage, seemingly oblivious to the team of medical staff that had scrambled to stabilize him.

That and the blood. There had been so much blood. The gory images burned into his brain had made it extremely difficult for Gordon to wrap his mind around the fact that Barney had apparently been quite lucky, all things considered.

None of his fractures had been significantly displaced, including his broken ribs, which meant the medical team’s initial concern that he might have had a punctured or collapsed lung had turned out to be unfounded. He hadn’t had any serious internal bleeding, his head injury had been extremely minor, and most of his shrapnel wounds were relatively superficial.

And, most importantly, he was still alive.

As he replaced the clipboard, Gordon glanced through the tiny window next to the door and found himself rooted to the spot as he stared at the bandaged figure asleep on the hospital cot. The man was definitely Barney, but he looked so fragile… and so _old._

Gordon realized with a start that he found the sight so jarring because the version of Barney he still saw in his mind’s eye—the imaginary person he’d been conversing with in his head for the last several days—was a representation of 25-year-old Barney from Black Mesa. A version of Barney that didn’t exist anymore.

That made sense, he supposed, since the vast majority of his memories of Barney were of his younger self. Still, this felt like an unsettling reminder that he was about to confront a near stranger. 45-year-old Barney looked and acted just like an older, battle-weary version of the man Gordon had known so well at Black Mesa… but two decades of war had to change a person, and it probably didn’t make them more forgiving.

Gordon’s throat went dry as he suddenly felt even more woefully underprepared for this conversation than he had when he’d first arrived at the medical bay.

His heart pounded in his chest as he drummed his fingers against his thigh and considered his options, ignoring the curious looks directed at him by passing medical staff. The only thing he knew for sure was that he needed more time.

A moment later, Gordon caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye and realized in alarm that Barney had woken up from his nap. Before his legs could obey his brain’s frantic command to _run_ , he watched Barney’s face light up as he spotted Gordon peering in through the window, sealing his fate.

 _‘Well, there’s no going back now,’_ Gordon told himself as he flashed a brief smile of acknowledgment that he hoped belied his inner turmoil.

He stepped away from the window and took a couple of deep breaths to steel himself. He reminded himself of his mantra: _'Don’t get defensive. Let him be angry. Don’t cry. Don’t let him blame Alyx.’_

Finally, he squared his shoulders, opened the door, and stepped into the small, brightly lit room.

“Hey Doc, how’re ya feeling?” Barney greeted with a wide grin as Gordon shut the door and turned to face him. “Alyx said you were pretty freaked out about all the blood and whatnot, but look—I’m just fine, see?” He proceeded to gesture at himself with his right hand; his left arm was in a plaster cast.

Much of Barney’s torso and his right leg were also bandaged, and he was connected to an awful lot of tubes and wires for a guy who was supposedly ‘just fine.’ An extensive collection of smaller cuts, burns, and bruises that seemed to mark every inch of his exposed skin suggested that Barney had, at some point, found himself just a little too close to at least one explosion.

Overall, he looked better than Gordon had expected him to, but he still looked like he'd been to hell and back. 

Gordon felt like a deer caught in the headlights, unsure how to proceed. He could definitely see, now, why Alyx had been so unsettled the night before. How was he supposed to respond to that casual greeting like everything was normal?

As Gordon continued to fidget silently, seemingly frozen in the middle of the room, Barney spoke again. “Man, I get it. I’d be freaked out too, if our positions were reversed. But really, I promise I’m fine.”

Barney’s face split into a grin as he added, “Not many people get to say they got caught in the middle of a hunter sandwich and lived to tell about it, eh? And we got the bastards too!” He punctuated that final statement with a raised fist of victory.

Indeed, Gordon had heard that the rebels had managed to defeat the Combine forces—far more of them than they’d originally anticipated—without any casualties, largely thanks to Barney’s planning and leadership. He was proud of his friend, and he couldn’t help but crack a smile at Barney’s display of enthusiasm.

Barney noticed the change in Gordon’s expression immediately. “Ah, there ya go! That’s better. Jesus, you wandered in here lookin' like someone had _died_ or something.”

Gordon flinched at the remark and fought to keep his emotions in check as he finally found his voice. “I… I was really worried. It helps to see… well, to _hear_ that you sound like yourself. I… feel like I should’ve been there.”

“Bummed you missed out on all the fun, huh?” Barney joked, gesturing at his various injuries once again. “Look, if you’re feelin’ guilty about not being there, don’t. It was supposed to be an easy mission and no offense, Doc, but bringin’ you along tends to escalate things and we didn’t need all that.”

That was a relief to hear, actually. Despite his preoccupation with the Lauren situation, Gordon had thought to question why he hadn’t been asked to join the rebels in the Outlands. He wasn’t the indestructible killing machine that everyone seemed to believe him to be, but he figured he could’ve distracted the Combine to give the others an edge or… something.

“Fair enough,” Gordon responded after a long moment, unsure what else to say. He felt almost as if a physical weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and his smile widened. This conversation was off to a better start than he’d expected.

He considered moving to sit in the chair beside Barney’s bed, but then thought the better of it. It felt safer, somehow, to remain standing near the door. It was important to have an escape route, even though he knew he’d never forgive himself if he actually used it.

“So, hey, now that you’re back among the living… what’s goin’ on with Alyx?” Barney asked suddenly, changing the subject. “Something’s clearly eating her, and if you’re up and carryin' on conversations—sort of—it can’t just be that she’s worried about you.”

Gordon sighed. Well, at least Barney had given him a good segue. It was time to bite the bullet.

He cleared his throat. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that. I kind of… well, I…” Barney quirked an eyebrow and Gordon had to look away to avoid losing his nerve. “The day you got injured, I accidentally told her something about my past… that involves you, that, uh… surprised her, and she’s still processing.” 

For a split second, Barney mirrored Gordon’s deer-in-the-headlights look, before his expression of fear morphed into a mischievous grin as he made a blatantly transparent attempt to mask his apprehension with humor. 

“Let me guess,” Barney teased with a wink, “you told her about the Christmas party, didn’t ya?”

Gordon was taken aback; well, he _had,_ but that wasn’t what he had been getting at and… oh, God. He felt himself blush involuntarily as he recalled both the original event and Alyx’s recent reaction to the story of their _extremely_ drunken makeout session all those years ago. What had possessed him to tell her about that, anyway?

Barney took in Gordon’s stunned, mortified expression and immediately deduced that his assumption had been correct. He burst into hysterical laughter, which only intensified as Gordon sighed deeply and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Suddenly, Barney abruptly stopped laughing and seemed to struggle to catch his breath. He flashed a pained grimace, which Gordon sympathetically matched. It was hard to be annoyed at his friend for laughing at his expense when he was clearly in so much pain from his broken ribs. 

“Did you tell her you started it?” Barney asked, once he’d regained his composure, and Gordon instantly changed his mind. As it turned out, he could, in fact, be annoyed and concerned at the same time.

Against his better judgment, he took the bait. “No… no, it was _definitely_ your idea!”

Barney rolled his eyes. “Gordon, come on, you’ve always been a horny drunk.” His tone was light and matter of fact, as if he were explaining something blatantly obvious and not at all embarrassing to a small child.

“… You’re bisexual!”

“And you’re not?” Barney fired back with a smirk as he leaned back into his pillow, secure in the knowledge that he’d won.

Gordon sighed and raised his hands in surrender, unwilling to further engage with that line of inquiry under these circumstances. He begrudgingly admitted to himself that he’d walked straight into that one when he’d thrown out that lazy comeback, which didn’t really prove anything anyway.

Barney let Gordon stew for a few seconds before he spoke again. “Alyx was into it, wasn’t she?”

Gordon groaned. He decided to tell the truth, since he knew Barney would most likely ask Alyx about this at some point. “Actually… yes, she was.”

This prompted another round of only slightly less raucous laughter from Barney. It was quite a feat, Gordon noted with wry amusement, to survive two decades of grueling oppression without maturing _one iota,_ but it appeared that Barney had achieved just that. 

“D’you think she’d be interested in a live reenactment?”

Barney was definitely kidding—well, he was _probably_ kidding—but Gordon wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of playing along this time. “Surely you can’t be serious,” he deadpanned.

“Oh, I’m _very_ serious,” Barney replied with another exaggerated wink, “and don’t call me Shirley.”

Despite his best efforts to maintain a straight face, Gordon couldn’t contain a snort of laughter. This really was the Barney he remembered. For a moment, he allowed himself to indulge in the luxury of nostalgia, as he envisioned himself cracking open a beer, kicking his feet up, and relaxing into a comfortable chair to keep the banter going.

He imagined that if he closed his eyes, he could fool himself into thinking they were back at Black Mesa, relaxing after-hours while blissfully oblivious to the horrors that awaited them, instead of awkwardly regarding each other from opposite sides of a recovery room in the bowels of a former Soviet missile base.

The thought of Black Mesa brought to mind a vivid memory of Lauren, sprawled out across the entire length of Barney’s hideous green living room sofa, pelting her boyfriend with popcorn kernels as the two argued about whose turn it was to pick the movie, and—

No, he couldn’t let himself think about that right now.

Gordon shook his head to bring himself back to the present and pretended not to notice Barney’s quizzical look. He squared his shoulders and tried, once again, to address the elephant in the room.

“Fine, you won that one, Barn,” he conceded. “But this is actually _not_ what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“What else could you have _possibly_ told her?” Barney asked, still chuckling despite the pain it clearly caused him. His eyes went wide. “Oh my God, did you tell her about Dr. Morton’s retirement party?... or, _ooh_ , did ya tell her about karaoke night? I bet she’d love that one…”

As Barney continued listing some of their more memorable drunken escapades, Gordon tried (and completely, utterly failed) to suppress a sudden wave of anxiety. He drummed his fingers against his thigh and forced himself to take measured breaths, willing his voice not to fail him as he catastrophized about where this exchange was heading.

He knew this was a defense mechanism for Barney, which meant his friend was likely to go on for _hours_ if Gordon let him, and he’d be trapped here, and he would inevitably lose his nerve once the comedy routine wore him down, and then Alyx would be upset with him, and then he’d have to try to do this whole thing _again,_ and he’d probably get so stressed out that he’d lose his voice for days or weeks, and then…

“Barney,” he snapped, more forcefully than he’d intended. He nearly backed down when Barney froze mid-monologue and blanched, apparently shocked by the realization that Gordon wasn’t going to let him joke his way out of a serious conversation, for perhaps the first time in the history of their friendship. 

Gordon couldn’t quite meet his friend’s gaze, but he plastered on what he hoped was an appropriately contrite expression and took a deep breath.

“I accidentally told her about Lauren.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this ended up being way longer than it was supposed to be, and I'm publishing it earlier than I expected to. Writing Gordon's anxiety gives me anxiety, but not nearly as much as arguing about politics with my extended family over the holidays does, so I found a lot of excuses to sneak away and work on this under the guise of "working from home." Nothing says "Merry Christmas" quite like writing angsty fanfiction to avoid confronting your childhood traumas! 
> 
> I'm still not 100% happy with how this turned out, but I'm ready to move on and I promise any sneaky post-publication edits will be very minor.


	6. Chapter 6

The silence that engulfed the tiny room was absolutely deafening. Time seemed to decelerate to a crawl as Gordon stood frozen on the spot, watching helplessly as his friend’s eyes went wide with shock and betrayal.

“I—” _I’m sorry,_ he wanted to say, but the words caught in his throat.

Only when the edges of his vision started to go fuzzy did Gordon finally force himself to breathe.

Slowly, the pounding of his heartbeat in his ears faded, giving way to a heightened awareness of the sound of Barney’s heart monitor. The increasingly rapid beeping felt like a warning; it reminded him of a Combine door lock set to self-destruct. 

A chill ran down Gordon’s spine and he sharply averted his gaze, suddenly desperate to look somewhere else, _anywhere else_ , to avoid having to face the moment when Barney's shock would inevitably give way to anger.

He’d confessed, but he was still a coward.

A growing awareness of the murmur of nearby voices, only partially muffled by the closed door, reminded Gordon that he was exposed in more ways than one. Not only had he dropped a bomb, but now, anyone who happened to glance through the small window into the room would be a witness to the fallout. 

The unsettling thought shocked him out of his daze and spurred him into action. He made his way over to the window and twisted the blinds shut, in hopes of sending a clear message to any passersby that they were not to be disturbed. He also locked the door, just for good measure, before collapsing against it for support as he prepared to face the music.

 _'Don't get defensive,'_ he reminded himself. _'Let him be angry. Don't cry. Don't let him blame Alyx.'_

He scanned the room, stalling for time, until his eyes reluctantly met Barney’s. His friend’s face was contorted into an expression of agony not unlike the one that had followed his laughter mere minutes before, though Gordon suspected his pain was not entirely physical this time.

As soon as Gordon started to open his mouth to speak, Barney visibly tensed, and his face twisted into a scowl. Gordon had seen this expression before, on a handful of occasions, but he’d never expected to find himself on the receiving end of it.

“What made you think you had the _right_?” Barney hissed through clenched teeth, fixing Gordon with a glare so intense that he practically felt it burning right through him. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, still struggling to find his voice. “It just… slipped out. I know, I shouldn’t have… I’m sorry.” He lowered his head, unsure what else to say.

“What _exactly_ did you tell her?”

“Not much.” That was true, at least. “Just that she existed, and”—Gordon gulped—“that you were engaged to her.”

Barney barked a laugh in response; it was a cold, humorless sound that seemed to echo through the small room. “Jesus, Freeman, I never thought I’d have say this to _you_ , of all people, but why couldn’t you have just kept your _fucking_ mouth shut?”

“You’re right to be angry,” Gordon acknowledged, choosing his words carefully. He’d expected this reaction. He could handle this. “If I could take it back, I would. But—”

Barney cut him off. “You know what you’ve done, right? Alyx is _not_ gonna let this go, and who knows who else she’s gone and told by now?” With his good arm, Barney slammed a fist into his bandaged thigh for emphasis, wincing and letting out a hiss as he appeared to immediately regret the gesture. 

“She hasn’t told a soul,” Gordon said, jumping quickly to Alyx’s defense. “Yes, she’s got a lot of questions, but… come on. You know she’s a vault when it comes to things like this.” He paused to swallow his growing panic. “ _I’m_ the one you should be mad at. You can trust her.”

He held his breath as Barney opened his mouth to respond, froze, and then closed it again, as if he’d thought the better of whatever he’d planned to say. The unexpected display of restraint helped Gordon find the courage to take a couple of small steps forward. He held his hands out, palms facing up, in what he hoped would be interpreted as a gesture of peace.

“I haven’t told her any other details, even though she’s asked. I thought… I figured…” He sighed. “I know it’s not my place. You should be the one to tell her.”

“Oh, so you decided to pay me a visit to tell me that I _have_ to tell her? You fucked up and now you’re here to tell me to jump and you expect me to ask how high? Is that it?” Barney scoffed. “How 'bout you take your egotistical Messiah bullshit somewhere else?”

Gordon couldn’t help but flinch at the accusation, and Barney wasn’t done yet.

“I see you’ve let all that ridiculous hero worship go to your head.” Barney rolled his eyes, and his tone of mocking hostility intensified. “Silly me for thinkin’ you were above all that, huh, when now you’re over here actin’ like you’ve got some God-given right to tell me how to handle this just because you came back from the dead.”

Gordon’s stomach dropped as he realized with chagrin that he had, in fact, imagined this encounter ending with Barney telling Alyx all about Lauren, or at least giving him permission to tell her everything himself. And Barney was right, it wasn’t fair of him to expect that. But, still… there had to be a way to salvage this.

He took a breath and tried a different approach. “That’s not—no, I don’t… I’m not asking you to do anything. You’re right, that’s not fair. I just thought… thought you should know that she knows, all right? And if you ever want to talk about it—”

“What in the everlivin’ _hell_ makes you think I wanna talk about it?” Barney growled, cutting him off again. “Christ… what’s it gonna take for you to get this through your head? This is none of your business and I didn’t ask for your help!”

Despite his best efforts to adhere to his earlier mantra, Gordon felt himself starting to get defensive.

“It was an _accident_ , Barn. I feel terrible, okay? I know you don’t want to talk now, but I just wanted to offer, in case… in case something changes and you decide you want to talk to someone who…” He trailed off as a ball of frustration caught in his throat. _Knew her. Someone who knew her._

“Aw, bless your heart.” Wow, Gordon had forgotten how much Barney’s southern accent came out when he was angry. “For a genius, you’re awfully fuckin’ stupid sometimes, Freeman. How’d you manage to miss the memo?” He spelled it out for him, speaking slowly as if Gordon were a child. _“We don’t talk about Black Mesa anymore.”_

Something in Gordon snapped. He set his jaw, straightened his back, and planted his feet as he prepared to fire back. If this was how Barney was going to treat him, then _fine._ Two could play at this game.

“Oh, _trust me_ , I’m aware,” he retorted, allowing a hint of sarcasm to leak into his voice. “Nobody talks about _anything_ anymore, apparently! I have been living this nightmare for months now, and I feel like I’m still in the dark about… practically everything, really! Everything important, at least.”

To emphasize his point, Gordon began ticking off unanswered questions on his fingers. “Like, what happened to the people you escaped with? Are there… are there Black Mesa survivors in other parts of the world? And… how, exactly, did the Combine takeover happen? Also, _when,_ exactly, did that happen, and… God, what was that even _like?”_

Infuriatingly, Barney merely shrugged; it was a lopsided gesture, due to his injuries, but its intended meaning was painfully clear.

Gordon clenched his jaw again and shoved his hands into his pockets, willing himself not to say something he would later regret. 

A moment later, Barney smirked, as if he found Gordon’s obvious frustration at his lack of response amusing in some sick, twisted way. “Talk to Alyx,” he suggested with another dismissive shrug.

Oh, if only it was that simple.

“She was _four!”_ Gordon exclaimed, throwing up his arms in exasperation. “There’s a lot she doesn’t remember, and I can’t go around asking random people because they all think I was just… I don’t know, hiding out in the wilderness and drinking anti-aging potions for twenty years, I guess, and everyone besides Alyx who knows the truth—everyone I could actually talk to—is freezing me out! _Including you!”_

Gordon noted, as he gasped for breath and clenched his hands into fists so tightly that his fingernails drew blood from his palms, that his concerns about losing his voice during this confrontation had apparently been unfounded. If anything, his inability to _shut up_ was likely to be his undoing.

Barney’s outright dismissal of his perfectly valid questions had triggered something deep within his psyche and unleashed a torrent of long-repressed emotions—confusion, terror, heartache, _rage_ —that he hadn’t yet fully processed… and he was _done_ bottling up those feelings for the sake of everyone else’s sanity.

He’d been a silent puppet long enough.

When Gordon snapped out of his internal monologue, shaking and seething, he couldn’t help but notice that Barney appeared entirely unfazed by his outburst. His old friend seemed perfectly content to remain maddeningly silent, ostensibly oblivious to Gordon’s turmoil as he nonchalantly twirled a loose thread around his finger and stared resolutely at his lap.

Gordon scowled and bit back another snide remark. Was Barney _seriously_ giving him the silent treatment? Now who was acting like a child?

Almost as if he’d sensed that Gordon was staring at him, Barney chose that moment to acknowledge his presence once again. He raised his head and quirked an eyebrow, as if he had somehow not expected to find Gordon still standing in front of him.

Barney then proceeded to look him dead in the eyes as he drawled, condescension oozing from every word, “It ever occur to you that maybe we’ve got our reasons for keeping to ourselves?”

A vein in Gordon’s forehead throbbed as he completely lost his grip on his temper. “I _know_ you’ve all got your reasons, but that doesn’t stop me from having questions! Wouldn’t you?”

Having reached a breaking point, he began to shamelessly vent his frustration, words tumbling out faster and faster as be built up momentum. “Imagine if you woke up from a… nap… and suddenly found yourself in some alien-run Orwellian hellscape, and all your friends were either old or _dead_ , and everyone thought you were the… the goddamn _second coming of Christ_ and expected you to just… _fix everything?!_ Don’t you think you’d have a few questions about what the heck happened while you were out?!”

He had so much more that he wanted to say, but he could hardly hear his own thoughts over the rush of blood pounding in his ears. The room felt hot and his heart threatened to pound its way out of his chest. Everything felt overwhelming and liberating and terrifying all at once.

Barney’s expression softened for a split second before he fixed Gordon with another cold, empty stare and doubled down on his sarcasm. “Well geez, Doc, that changes _everything_. That sounds _so hard_ for you. Pray tell, Gordon, what part of that made you feel like you had the right to tell random people about _my_ personal life?”

It seemed they were back on a first-name basis, so maybe that meant something. Gordon seized on that tiny sliver of hope and forced himself to take several long, slow, deep breaths in a last-ditch effort to calm himself down before responding.

“You know Alyx isn’t ‘random people…’” he started softly, his voice faltering as he felt suddenly overcome by fear that he had failed; that Barney was still going to blame Alyx for all of this, and they would hurt each other and it would be all his fault, and then they would _both_ hate him…

All it took was another glance at Barney’s stubbornly indifferent expression for that fear to transform into another wave of rage. “And we were _best friends_ , Barney!” Just like that, he was yelling again. “How can you expect me to just… to just _never_ talk about my old life again? This was bound to come up sometime, and I’m _sorry_ …” He swallowed hard. “But Lauren was my friend too!”

Barney visibly recoiled at the name, almost as if he had been slapped, before quickly replacing his mask of stoicism in a display of passive defiance.

Gordon still had enough presence of mind, even though he could feel himself becoming more and more unhinged by the minute, to feel like a monster for name-dropping Barney’s fiancée for pure shock value. His chest had felt tight when he’d said it, as if his body had somehow known it was wrong long before his brain had caught up. 

And then, seconds later, a bolt of clarity struck.

Barney’s deliberate erasure of Lauren from the narrative of his life had affected Gordon far more deeply than he had been willing to admit, even to himself. It felt confusing and wrong, but beyond that… it also felt deeply, painfully personal.

No matter how much Gordon wanted to believe that he was lashing out simply because he was angry about having been left in the dark, he found that he could no longer deny the truth. The driving force behind much of his anger was, in fact, a far more shameful emotion: He was _jealous._

Barney knew _exactly_ what had happened to Lauren. Gordon was practically certain of that, at this point.

That meant Barney had the power, the _luxury_ , of knowing and controlling secrets that, if shared, would allow Gordon to fulfill his desperate need to properly grieve for one—just _one_ —of the loved ones he’d lost. But Barney had apparently decided that he didn’t deserve to know the truth, without offering even the vaguest apology or explanation as to why.

And that just wasn’t fair.

A sudden flood of excruciating shame and grief hit Gordon like a freight train, practically knocking his shaking legs out from under him.

Out of desperation, he forced himself to cross the stretch of no-man’s land between himself and Barney to claim the only usable chair in the room. Heart pounding, he only dared to venture close enough to grab the backrest with an outstretched arm before making a hasty retreat back to the relative safety of ‘his’ corner of the room. 

In doing so, he caught another glimpse of Barney, who was _still_ pretending to ignore him with his jaw set in a grim line like a petulant child, despite the fact that he was… God, Barney was _18 years_ his senior.

He hadn’t yet fully processed that, either. All of a sudden, the lights seemed too bright, and his thoughts were racing, and his chest felt tight…

Feeling suddenly exposed, Gordon spun the chair around so that it was facing backwards before collapsing into it with his legs on either side, gripping the backrest in front of him like a shield. He squeezed his eyes shut and willed himself to breathe through the flash of panic that was threatening to overwhelm him.

A moment later, the feeling passed, though he found that his deep breathing had done little to help him calm down. It had, however, allowed him to focus his thoughts well enough to settle on a new course of action. 

It was one thing, he’d decided, for people to keep secrets about things that he hadn’t been around to witness, but Lauren had been a part of his life just as much as she’d been a part of Barney’s… and goddammit, he wasn’t going to give up what may be his last shot at closure for that chapter of his life without a fight. 

Gordon sat up, squared his shoulders, and crossed his arms. If Barney wanted to pretend that he couldn’t hear or see him like they were children, _fine._ But he still was going to say his piece. 

“Believe it or not,” Gordon began, his voice steady despite his simmering resentment, “I really did come in here just to tell you that Alyx knows about her.” He couldn’t bring himself to say Lauren’s name again.

After a brief pause to collect his thoughts, he continued. “But to be completely honest… I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that you never told her yourself. And don’t try to blow me off with this whole ‘nobody talks about Black Mesa anymore’ bullshit. You’ve told Alyx—you’ve told _everyone_ — _tons_ of stories from back then, so you and I both know that’s a terrible excuse.”

Barney was still avoiding his gaze and his expression hadn’t faltered, but Gordon noted with a feeling of sick satisfaction that his old friend’s hands had started to shake, and he was sweating.

Something he’d said had penetrated that infuriating façade of detachment, and that felt like progress. 

“You know who else used to talk about Black Mesa?” Gordon softened his tone, both out of respect for the dead and in an effort to further chip away at Barney’s emotional armor. “Eli. I didn’t even have to ask him to tell me what… what happened to Azian. He filled me in right away—even though I’m sure that was painful for him—because he knew I’d known her… and that it was only fair to tell me as much as he knew about what happened to her.”

Gordon hunched over in his chair and took a deep, shaky breath as his thoughts sharply turned back to Lauren. “I know she’s gone, Barn,” he murmured, his voice breaking as he blinked back tears.

Barney offered no response, save for a sigh. It wasn’t clear to Gordon whether or not he had even heard what he’d said.

Another few seconds passed in silence before Gordon regained his composure. “And fine, maybe you have your reasons for not telling Alyx or anyone else anything about what happened to her… or that she even _existed_ …” His anger was creeping back with a vengeance, in spite of his efforts to keep it in check. “But I knew her, and again, I’m _sorry_ … but I don’t understand why you can’t just tell me what happened.”

He stopped there and held his breath, propping his head up with one hand as he waited for a response.

Barney was quiet for a long moment, before he clasped his shaking hands together in his lap and whispered, almost inaudibly, “It’s not that simple, Gordon.”

Undeterred, Gordon sat up and switched to a radically different tack. There was already virtually no chance, he reasoned, that their friendship would bounce back from this… and if he’d learned one thing from his recent experiences with interdimensional alien warfare, it was that sometimes you had no choice but to fight dirty.

“Then you admit that it’s not just that you don’t talk about Black Mesa,” he accused, his tone suddenly icy. “There’s something _else,_ then. Some other reason you don’t want to tell me.” He paused for effect, drumming his fingers against the back of the chair as he let the statement hang in the air.

Barney drew in a sharp breath before slowly, _slowly_ turning to meet Gordon’s steely gaze. At first, his expression conveyed only thinly veiled anger laced with grief, but then something changed, almost imperceptibly. Gordon knew this face, aged as it was, well enough to register that Barney suddenly looked vulnerable; in fact, he looked almost _scared._

He could have stopped there. He should have stopped there. But by this point, he had once again been entirely consumed by his anger and his blind quest for answers, and he was _so close,_ too close to surrender now…

“Were you not in love with her? Was that it?” This time, he barely noticed how Barney flinched at his words, keen as he was to continue twisting the knife. “Because I can’t think of any other reason why you would just… just _erase her from history_ like she meant nothing to you!”

Gordon gripped the back of the chair so hard that his knuckles turned white as a sharp pang of grief reminded him of another painful omission. “And actually, while we’re on the subject of erasing people from history, I have a few questions about—” 

“It was my fault, Gordon!”

As he spoke, Barney’s face contorted into an expression of absolute anguish that Gordon knew would haunt him for the rest of his life. 

That suffocating, time-distorting silence descended upon the tiny room once again, leaving them both reeling and gasping for breath. 

The beeping of Barney’s heart monitor was suddenly the only thing keeping Gordon grounded as he rested his heavy head in his hands and tried to make sense of Barney’s confession through the waves of shame and anxiety that bombarded him as the weight of what he’d done hit him with full force. 

It couldn’t possibly have been Barney’s fault; if anything, it had been his. He’d been in the test chamber that day…

Gordon’s body shook as the real-world implications of his crushing guilt about the resonance cascade suddenly felt a lot less abstract than usual.

Technically, he had been the one to kill her. 

The sound of a sharp intake of breath abruptly tore Gordon from his thoughts. It appeared Barney had more to say, and now it was his turn to twist the knife.

“She was pregnant, she was _murdered,_ and it was my fault,” Barney ground out through clenched teeth, pausing between each phrase to allow his words to sink in. “Is _that_ what you wanted to hear?”

 _No._ None of this felt real. None of this made any sense.

Gordon felt himself starting to dissociate and pinched himself, hard enough to break his skin, before he could completely space out. He couldn’t leave Barney alone like that. He owed it to his old friend, after all the terrible things he had done, to face this head-on. 

It felt like it had only been a few months since he’d last seen Lauren. He could still picture her in his mind’s eye… happy, smiling, and… pregnant? No, that couldn’t… they’d never told him… she hadn’t seemed… God, had Barney been with her when she’d died? Had he been forced to leave her behind?

Although he wanted nothing more than for the ground to swallow him whole, Gordon managed to bring himself to look directly at the man he had quite possibly destroyed in his deranged quest for closure, just in time to witness the moment when Barney stopped seething and simply… deflated.

His shoulders drooped, his face twisted into a grimace of pain, and he let out a miserable sob as he finally succumbed to his grief. 

For a long moment, Gordon found himself frozen as he took in the pitiful display before him. He’d never seen Barney cry before, and seeing it now felt fundamentally, deeply _wrong_. This was a man who had survived things that Gordon still couldn’t begin to imagine, even in his wildest nightmares… and now here he was, falling apart at the seams.

He had done that. This was his fault.

Stiffly, mechanically, Gordon forced himself to stand up. He had to do… something. There had to be some way to fix this.

Each step felt longer than the last as fought through the fog of his adrenaline crash to haul his heavy body across the room. Barney offered no acknowledgment as Gordon lowered himself down onto the edge of his hospital cot.

Very carefully, so as not to disturb any of the tubes and wires, he wrapped an unsteady arm around his old friend’s shaking shoulders. Barney’s body immediately sagged into his clumsy embrace, and Gordon felt another sharp pang of guilt as he realized how much it must hurt to cry with three broken ribs.

 _I’m sorry,_ Gordon wanted to tell him, but the words simply wouldn’t come. _I don’t know what’s wrong with me. You didn’t deserve this. Lauren didn’t deserve this. It wasn’t your fault._

_I’m so sorry._

After a few more pathetic attempts to speak, he finally gave up. What could he possibly say to fix this? Hadn’t he already done enough damage?

Gordon gently rested his head against Barney’s where it was slumped against his shoulder, closing his eyes as his heart broke for the happy young couple that had been once his closest friends.

He had even more questions now, but somehow, the answers no longer seemed important. Lauren was really, truly gone; what was the point, then, of fixating on the hows and whys? No amount of explanation or reminiscing was going to bring her back.

Just a second too late, Gordon remembered the fourth component of the pre-confrontation mantra that he had so thoroughly failed to uphold: _‘Don’t cry.’_


	7. Chapter 7

Everything hurt like _hell._

Between his physical agony and the deep, deep ache in the pit of his stomach that he hadn’t felt so intensely in _years_ , Barney found himself trapped, unable to move but tragically still conscious. He longed for simpler times, when all he’d had to deal with was a few broken bones and some moderately life-threatening blood loss.

You know, the easy stuff.

He didn’t need a mirror to tell him that he looked like absolute shit, and even though he’d long since regained his composure, every breath still seemed to intensify the burning pain in his ribs. All available evidence suggested he’d dislodged something important; at the very least, he’d sure aggravated the hell out of a partially healed wound.

If this somehow did him in, that would be just his luck, wouldn’t it? To survive a brutal ambush against all odds, only to end up kicking the bucket anyway, days later, due to medical complications resulting from a surprisingly devastating whatever-the-hell-that-was with the quietest, least confrontational man on Earth.

And, Jesus… Who knew Gordon actually had it in him? For a guy who used to either run for the hills or completely shut down at the first sign of conflict, he sure knew how to get under someone’s skin when he really wanted to. Christ.

Barney would've sighed, at this point, if not for the fact that doing so would have been excruciatingly painful. He wanted _so badly_ to stay angry with Gordon, but that was becoming progressively more difficult as his body’s stupid post-crying endorphin rush restored his ability to analyze the situation rationally. 

He should have seen this coming. In fact, he _had_ seen this coming, and it was arguably his own damn fault that things had gone south so quickly. He’d been delaying the inevitable for weeks.

In retrospect, he couldn’t blame Gordon for feeling resentful, though he sure as hell could blame him for being such an ass about it. 

… Then again, could he? Even after all the terrible things they’d said to each other, Gordon hadn’t left his side, and that had to count for something. His old friend had cried with him for a while, and then he’d just… stayed, seemingly content to let Barney rest against his shoulder indefinitely. Gordon’s arm was still wrapped around him and he’d hardly moved an inch in God knows how long.

That was the worst part, Barney thought, about being confined to a tiny interior room for days on end: He had lost all concept of the passage of time.

An occasional sniffle or subtle movement confirmed that Gordon was still awake, but beyond that, what he was actually thinking or feeling was anybody’s guess, since his face was just out of view. Barney hoped he was aware that he’d crossed a line, but he also would’ve been lying if he’d said he wasn’t thankful that Gordon had stayed.

He didn’t want to be alone.

Barney closed his eyes and focused on the sound and movement of Gordon’s even breathing in a desperate attempt to distract himself from the pain radiating from his chest, which was rapidly approaching an 11 on a 1-to-10 scale.

After a few more… seconds? minutes? hours?… a loud sound shocked Barney out of his trance and a bolt of blinding agony shot through his body as Gordon’s solid, comforting presence abruptly disappeared. With nothing left to ground him, Barney felt terribly disoriented and vulnerable.

Panic began to set in as he discovered that he was a _lot_ more out of it than he’d realized.

He heard the murmur of unfamiliar voices but couldn’t make out any words as cold hands swept over him. Cold hands meant nurses, right? Nurses or—no, he was safe here. It could only be nurses. Right?

Finally, _finally,_ Barney felt a blissful sensation spreading from the crook of his right elbow. He relaxed into the mattress as the warmth gradually flooded his entire body and mind, taking his pain and confusion away and replacing it with a sense of comfort and serenity. 

_Morphine._ It was about damn time.

After allowing some time for the drug to reach every corner of his system, he opened his eyes and glanced around the room, searching for Gordon. His stomach dropped as he discovered that his old friend was nowhere to be found.

As he’d feared, he’d been abandoned after all.

One of the nurses had followed his gaze and looked like she wanted to say something, but Barney shook his head, cutting her off. He didn’t want to know what Gordon had said or where he’d gone, and he had absolutely no intention of answering any questions about his snot-streaked, haggard appearance. 

He nodded absently as he vaguely registered the other nurse telling him to stay hydrated and avoid exerting himself. The guy was a bit too late on both counts, but at least he meant well. Barney mumbled a half-hearted “Thanks, will do,” as the nurses finally left the room, closing the door behind them and leaving him alone with his thoughts.

Well, on a positive note, at least this probably meant he wasn’t dying. 

Now that his distracting pain was mostly gone, Barney was hyper-aware that his throat was painfully dry, but all things considered, he figured he’d survive. Beyond that, he felt… not quite numb, but considerably less emotionally raw, which was definitely an improvement over his earlier mental state.

He sighed deeply as he began to assess the gargantuan mental task before him. If repressing one’s emotional baggage was a sport, Barney figured he could have been a multiple-time Olympic gold medalist, but it was going to be a hell of a lot harder to bottle everything back up this time around. He subconsciously brushed the old scar on his left cheek, just to make sure it wasn’t somehow bleeding again, like it had when—

The sound of a soft knock at the door distracted Barney from his thoughts. 

“Yeah?” he grunted. Since when did nurses knock in this place, anyway? Didn’t they know the door wasn’t locked anymore? 

Slowly, the door creaked open to reveal not a nurse, but a very disheveled and despondent-looking Gordon. Even from a distance, Barney could see the pain and apprehension in his red-rimmed eyes as he hesitantly held up a glass of water: a peace offering.

If he’d had any tears left, Barney probably would’ve wept with relief. God, he was so, so thirsty. 

He nodded, wordlessly accepting the offer. While Gordon stepped into the room and closed the door behind him, Barney scooted over, very carefully, to leave a little more room for Gordon to sit on the edge of the bed.

He told himself he was just being polite, but somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he was really trying to keep Gordon from leaving him alone again. He was aware of the irony in his wanting Gordon to stay, but then again, he’d always been a fan of ‘hair of the dog’ hangover cures. This was basically the same idea, right?

Barney felt oddly vulnerable once again as Gordon sat down beside him, brought the glass of cold water to his lips, and then used his other hand to gently support his head as he leaned forward and began to drink in huge gulps.

The latter gesture struck Barney as a bit unnecessary, especially as he felt Gordon start to idly run his fingers through his hair, but he decided not to protest. It felt soothing, and he actually couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched him with such casual intimacy. After so many years, Gordon’s characteristic touchy-feely brand of affection somehow felt simultaneously familiar and foreign.

Exactly when, Barney wondered, had tenderness become such an anachronism?

As he continued to drink, a little more slowly now, Barney allowed himself to let go of the tension he’d been holding in his aching muscles as he fully relinquished what remained of his grudge. Gordon was clearly trying to make amends, and Barney was starting to feel the full weight of his guilt about keeping him at arm’s length for so many months.

God, it was so easy sometimes to forget that Gordon was practically still just a kid. He’d missed an awful lot while he was… wherever he was, and it was perfectly natural that he’d have some questions.

It wasn’t Gordon’s fault that his questions—and, in some ways, his mere presence—reminded Barney of things he’d spent half a lifetime trying to forget, and also made him feel like he was about a thousand years old.

Some best friend he was, huh? Everyone, including Barney, had asked so much of Gordon, and then he'd gone and slammed the door in Gordon’s face every single time he’d asked for something in return. _Of course_ Gordon had lashed out. Honestly, it was a wonder the guy hadn’t gone completely postal ages ago. 

Barney figured they all had Alyx to thank for keeping that from happening. He doubted he’d ever get tired of calling attention to the fact that Gordon was shacking up with a kid they both used to babysit, but aside from that, he had to admit he was glad those two had finally gotten their shit together when they did. After all they'd been through, they really needed each other.

They’d had a rough few months, dealing with Eli’s death and Gordon’s morphine withdrawal and whatever the hell happened with the _Borealis_ all at the same time. It was nothing short of a miracle that they’d come out the other side relatively unscathed and somehow genuinely happy to be alive, with something new to live for.

If anyone deserved happiness, it was Alyx and Gordon, but God, that didn’t mean it wasn’t hard to watch them interact, sometimes. Their goofy youthful romance reminded Barney so much of himself and—

Barney quickly abandoned that train of thought as he tilted his head back a bit further to swallow one last sip of water. The second he finished draining the glass, Gordon abruptly pulled both of his hands away. Barney found that he missed the contact, though there was no way in hell he was going to admit that out loud. 

A sidelong glance at his friend’s normally expressive face yielded surprisingly little insight into what was going on in his head. More than anything, Gordon just looked miserable.

The glass of water had been an olive branch of sorts, and now, it was Barney’s turn to reciprocate.

“Thanks,” he said, hoping he sounded as genuinely grateful as he felt. “I really needed that.”

Gordon nodded and flashed a brief half-smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes before slowly rising to his feet and glancing at the door, as if he wasn’t sure whether or not he was still welcome.

Barney sighed. There was no getting around the fact that, at some point, they were going to have to debrief that earlier disaster. Knowing Gordon’s tendency to brood, it was probably best that they try to leave things on at least a slightly better note before parting ways.

“Wait,” he said. Gordon froze. “Do you wanna do this now or would you rather wait ‘til later?”

Gordon remained silent, but he nodded once and then lowered himself back down onto the edge of the bed, which Barney took as a sign that he was ready to talk.

“All right, now’s good. I’ll have my secretary clear my schedule for the afternoon,” Barney joked, carefully keeping his tone light.

Gordon eyed him nervously, as if he wasn't quite sure how to react, prompting Barney to try a more serious, direct approach. “So," he asked, "do you wanna start us off, or should I?”

When Gordon still didn't respond, Barney turned to look directly at him. His brows were furrowed in frustration and he appeared to be _trying_ to talk, but no sound was… _oh._ Right. Yeah, that made sense.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Barney reassured him. “You don’t have to push yourself to talk if it’s just not happenin’ right now. I get it.” He paused as he thought about how best to proceed, given this limitation. “Think you can listen for a bit, though?” 

Visible relief washed across Gordon’s face as he nodded in response. To stall for time while he collected his thoughts, Barney forced himself to scoot closer to the far edge of the bed, which just barely left enough room for Gordon to squeeze in beside him.

Gordon, however, didn’t move. Barney realized after a beat of awkward silence that he probably didn’t recognize this as an invitation.

“C’mon, get over here,” Barney said, gesturing towards the empty space with his good arm. “Might as well get settled in for the long haul and honestly, watchin’ you try to get comfortable over there is really stressin’ me out.”

Gordon offered another small smile as he slid over and reclined, kicking his feet up onto the bed. The visible tension in his limbs and the light drumming of his fingers against his thigh suggested that he was still uncomfortable, but at least he was playing along.

Barney made sure to leave some space between them; it wasn’t like they were _cuddling_ or anything, after all, but he felt so much more relaxed after he felt Gordon settle in beside him. It was a hell of a lot easier to work up the courage to talk about all this when he didn’t have to look the guy in the eye. 

“Look, I’m not mad at you for having questions, all right?” he started, hoping to put Gordon at ease. “I’m sorry for freezin’ you out. I guess I kinda figured you could get someone else to fill you in… but Alyx is just a kid, Eli’s gone, Kleiner’s probably clammed up 'cause he’s still mourning, and Magnusson is… Magnusson, so… all that leaves is me, huh?” 

Out of the corner of his eye, Barney saw Gordon nod dejectedly in response.

“Yeah, okay, I get that now.” Barney sighed. “I’ll fill you in on some of the common knowledge background stuff sometime when I’ve got a bit more energy, I promise. And you’re right… someone shoulda done that a lot sooner.”

He paused for a beat before continuing. “But, Doc… you can’t just go around badgering people about this shit.” He did his best not to sound as exasperated as he felt, but he wanted to make this point. “We’ve _all_ lost damn near everything. And yeah, maybe some of us talked about it for the first couple’a years, but after that, we had to put it behind us so we could… just so we could keep going.”

Gordon’s expression suggested that he wanted nothing more than to disappear off the face of the Earth. (Well, he’d already done that once, right?) The second he caught Barney looking at him, he averted his gaze and hung his head in shame.

Damn. Barney had been building up to a bit of a lecture, but he’d forgotten how yelling at Gordon had always felt kind of like kicking a puppy. The guy knew when he’d screwed up, and he usually did such a good job of beating himself up that it wasn’t worth putting in the effort to pile on. 

“You were right about something else, though,” Barney continued instead of lecturing, which prompted Gordon to look up from his lap. “I do talk about Black Mesa a lot more than most other folks. That started with Alyx, since she had so many questions growin’ up—about her mom and then you, mostly—and sometimes nostalgia’s a nice distraction.”

He stopped there and rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly acutely aware of how close they were getting to dangerous conversational territory. “But… that doesn’t mean I have to share everything.”

Gordon nodded again, and an uncomfortable silence took hold in the room. Once again, the only sound either of them could focus on was the beeping of Barney’s heart monitor, which was making it impossible for him to mask his growing apprehension.

He really freaking hated that thing.

When he could no longer stand the sound of silence punctuated by that obnoxious, incessant beeping, Barney finally spoke again. He wasn’t ready to address the elephant in the room, but maybe he could tiptoe just a little closer to it. 

“I thought you were dead, you know?” he murmured, dropping his gaze down to his lap. “For the first couple years before the vorts started goin’ on about how you were going to come back and save us, or whatever. I saw ‘em dragging you away, back at Black Mesa, and I always kicked myself for not goin’ back for you.”

Barney felt Gordon reach out and gently rest a comforting hand on his arm, and he suddenly wished he’d told him this months ago. He’d carried that guilt with him for a long time, too, and even though he knew it was silly now, he hadn’t realized how badly he’d needed Gordon to personally absolve him until this very moment. 

“Thanks,” Barney whispered, before he paused to gather the courage to continue. “So, for a long time, I thought… I thought I’d lost both of you.”

He couldn’t hear himself think over the stupid heart monitor, but he needed to get this out. He felt he owed Gordon an explanation for his distant, dismissive behavior since his return.

He took a shaky breath. “And then… you came back. And you’re… God, you’re exactly the same.” Barney looked Gordon up and down and let out a wry laugh before abruptly turning away. “And I couldn’t decide if I was happy to have you back, or jealous that you somehow hadn’t had to live through this shit, or… sad, I guess, because… seein’ you again makes me think of her.”

Barney didn’t dare look at Gordon as that feeling of profound emptiness in the pit of his stomach that had never really gone away threatened to consume him once again. He squeezed his eyes shut as he tried to force it back down, just as he’d done daily for the last twenty years.

This time, though, the feeling didn’t just subside; it transformed into an unexpected, raw wave of anger.

Gordon had _no idea_ what it felt like to go on this long knowing that you couldn’t allow yourself to think about the one person you wanted _nothing more_ than to think about, just because other people were depending on you not to fall apart. Gordon hadn’t killed anyone who didn’t deserve to die. He hadn’t carried that guilt, that responsibility, that miserable burden for twenty years… and yet, he had the fucking _audacity_ to make sick accusations…

Gordon’s earlier words continued to echo in his head, even after his anger started to dissipate as quickly as it had come, leaving him reeling with grief.

“Do you really think I didn’t love her?” he asked, his voice breaking as he choked back a sob.

Gordon removed his hand from Barney’s arm and motioned for him to look up. After a moment’s hesitation, Barney complied. Gordon was shaking his head slowly, and his eyes had also welled up with tears.

“I’m sorry,” he mouthed, and Barney wanted to forgive him, but… if he was being honest with himself, he was going to need some time for that one. 

Then again, Gordon wasn’t the only one who’d said and done some nearly unforgivable things.

Barney decided to acknowledge that, for the sake of fairness. He attempted to swallow his grief before responding, “Look, it was a shitty thing to say and I’d be lyin' if I said I wasn’t still more than a little pissed at you… but I know I was also kind of an ass. I panicked, okay?”

It was a shitty excuse, but hey, panicking and ruining relationships was pretty much his signature move at this point. At least some things hadn’t changed in twenty years. Barney grimaced involuntarily as he repressed another unpleasant intrusive memory.

“I know how much you hate all that hero-worship shit and I shouldn't've accused you of buying into it,” Barney admitted. “It’s just that I’ve been thinkin’ about her more with you around and I guess you were right that it woulda come up sometime, but… God, I wasn’t ready. And so I panicked and I just… shut down for a bit there. And I’m sorry for that.”

Gordon was quiet for a moment, seemingly contemplating Barney’s words, before he turned towards him and pantomimed writing in the air.

Barney figured it was probably only fair to let him communicate beyond yes and no answers, if he was ready to do that. Gordon had done his fair share of listening. 

“There’s probably some scrap paper in one of the drawers over there,” Barney suggested. He jerked his head in the general direction of 'over there,' wincing with regret almost immediately as his body objected to the sharp, sudden movement. 

Gordon stood up to rifle through an old filing cabinet—Jesus, the medical staff had not even _tried_ to hide the fact that this room was usually reserved for storage—and soon emerged victorious, having located a notebook and a working pen.

Barney failed to suppress a snort as Gordon nearly tripped over the bed on his way to sit back down. He’d been trying to write and walk, which, historically, had almost always ended badly for him.

After carefully maneuvering back into his earlier position, Gordon finished writing and turned the paper around so Barney could read it.

‘Apology accepted,’ he’d written. ‘I know I crossed a line and I am so sorry.’ Underneath that, he’d added, ‘I know you loved her.’

“Yeah,” Barney murmured sadly, gripping the notebook like a lifeline as he was struck by another pang of grief. “I did.”

Before he could let that emotion get the best of him, he carefully composed himself and attempted to change the subject. 

“Jesus Doc, your handwriting…” he paused to laugh as he handed the notebook back to Gordon. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: You became the wrong kind of doctor.”

Gordon chuckled silently in response, which seemed like a good sign that he was holding up okay, all things considered. Suddenly, Gordon’s expression turned serious again, and he scribbled something else on the bottom of the same page.

‘It wasn’t your fault.’

Barney froze. “With all due respect, Gordon,” he responded hesitantly, “you weren’t there.”

His heart leapt into his throat as Gordon, seemingly undeterred, turned away and began to write more frantically. After several agonizingly long moments, he shoved the notebook into Barney’s lap and fixed him with a look of well-meaning defiance.

His blood ran cold as he reluctantly deciphered Gordon’s latest thoughts.

Shit, he wasn’t ready for this.

‘No, you weren’t there. Not in test chamber. Didn’t cause it. Thousands of other people died. Whatever happened afterwards = not your fault.’ Almost as an afterthought, Gordon had also scrawled, ‘I’m sure you did what you could.’

Barney closed his eyes and slowly let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. So, Gordon didn’t know, then. And he was still blaming _himself_ for the resonance cascade, which was another whole thing they were going to have to deal with at some point.

This was bad.

This was very, very bad, because Gordon was offering this reassurance based on several patently false assumptions. Barney supposed he could affirm those assumptions—it’s not like anyone else knew the truth, after all, so Gordon would never be any the wiser—but he couldn’t, in good conscience, lie about this if it meant Gordon would keep blaming himself for what had happened.

However, the alternative option was equally unappealing. Gordon clearly wasn’t going to let this go until Barney either set him straight or somehow managed to convince him that a couple lines of chicken scratch had instantly liberated him from two decades of suffocating guilt.

Gordon was earnest, but he wasn’t an idiot, and he’d already made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t going to let Barney joke and deflect his way out of this conversation. 

Yeah, he was going to have to tell him the truth.

Barney opened his eyes to find Gordon staring at him intently, his brows creased with concern.

“Look, Doc… I really appreciate this, okay?” he said, stalling for time. “I get what you’re tryin’ to do, and I wish I could believe you. I really do.”

Gordon’s face fell and he shrank away and crossed his arms across his chest, as if to brace himself for when the other shoe inevitably dropped. Barney’s unspoken “but” hung heavily in the room.

He took a deep breath and finally came clean. “But Lauren wasn’t in the facility that day. She wasn’t even in New Mexico.”

Barney couldn’t bring himself to look at Gordon as he sank back into his pillow and mentally reminded himself, with just as much conviction as he’d always felt, _‘It was my fault.’_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who's been following along with this so far! Despite what my constant not-so-sneaky updates to the anticipated number of chapters might imply, I promise I do actually have a plan here. I am just shockingly bad at estimating how many words it'll take to execute it.


	8. Chapter 8

“She wasn’t… what?”

Gordon’s incredulous whisper, hoarse and nearly inaudible, took Barney by surprise. He hadn’t expected to hear a peep out of the guy for at least another few hours, but then again, he supposed his understanding of Gordon’s specific anxiety triggers was more than a little out of date. 

“She never said anything?” Barney asked, even though the answer was obvious at this point. He finally mustered up the courage to face his old friend, who was slowly shaking his head, his features creased with an expression of complete bewilderment that might’ve almost been comical under any other circumstances.

Huh. He’d always kind of figured Lauren had called Gordon the second she’d gotten off the plane, seeing as she’d vented to Gordon damn near every other time he’d almost screwed things up for them.

Unless… Maybe she hadn’t called this time because she’d already made up her mind, just as Barney had long suspected.

Damn, sometimes he hated being right.

The temptation to dwell on this fresh hurt and regret was almost irresistible, but he knew this wasn’t the right time or place. The metaphorical cat was out of the bag now, and Gordon was still staring at him expectantly, waiting for some long-overdue explanation that Barney couldn’t bring himself to withhold any longer. 

“She wasn’t at Black Mesa,” Barney started slowly, gathering his resolve, “because… we’d had a fight. A couple days before the Incident. She went to New York to stay with her mom for a bit.” He paused. “She really didn’t tell ya? You didn’t hear anythin' from her at all?”

Gordon shook his head again. The poor guy kept opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water, but that was unsurprising, given the circumstances. He probably had a million questions and just couldn’t figure out where to start.

Barney decided to keep talking while Gordon collected his thoughts. Maybe he could preemptively answer some of those questions.

“Then I guess she probably also never told you she was pregnant,” he continued, after swallowing the lump that had been forming in his throat. “That was… that’s why we had the fight.”

God, that had come out of _nowhere_. They’d both been so busy with work that they hadn’t noticed anything was different—or at least, he hadn’t—and then, all of a sudden, _boom._ Lauren had sat him down and told him he was going to be a father.

At first, Barney was surprised when Gordon simply nodded in response; a couple seconds later, he belatedly remembered that he’d already disclosed that particular detail for the sake of shock value. He wasn’t proud of himself for that, but in his own defense, Gordon had been the first to stoop that low.

He sighed. “Right, yeah, I guess you already knew that. So, anyway… I kinda panicked.”

Barney’s face burned with shame as slightly fuzzy memories of that train wreck of a conversation came flooding back. Maybe ‘fight’ wasn’t quite the right way to describe it, but his excitement at the news had only lasted for a brief instant before fear had kicked in, and he had… not handled that well, to say the least.

“I mean, yeah, we wanted kids, but not _right then._ We were already gonna be strugglin’ to pay for a wedding and then all of a sudden we were gonna be parents? How in the hell were we s’pposed afford that?”

“Not to mention,” Barney continued after a short pause, “we were working at goddamn Black Mesa—and we all know what a freakin’ cancer factory that place was—so who’s to say the kid didn’t already have, I dunno, thirteen toes or tumors or superpowers or somethin’?”

He liked to think he’d phrased those concerns a little more delicately when he’d brought them up with Lauren.

He probably hadn’t, though.

Barney let a wry chuckle escape as he glanced at Gordon and caught a hint of mild amusement playing across his otherwise compassionate expression. “It’s fine,” he said, “you can laugh. Seems silly, doesn’t it, now that we’re all probably gonna wind up with at least twelve kinds of cancer before we make it out of middle age?”

Instead of accepting the invitation to laugh at his expense, Gordon’s expression turned suddenly solemn. A second too late, Barney realized that Gordon might not have had a chance to consider the long-term health consequences of all those weeks—or _years,_ in everyone else’s case—spent living and fighting a war in an urban wasteland.

Well, shit. That’s another thing they’d have to get into later. 

For now, though, he wanted to get on with the story before he lost his nerve. “So, yeah, that was _not_ the reaction she'd been hoping for. I think I knew I was just scared and wasn’t thinkin’ straight, so told her I needed a minute to wrap my head around the whole thing... and then she just up and decided she was gonna go stay with her mom.”

Barney sighed deeply and stole another glance at Gordon, who was still sitting silently beside him, his expression unreadable. Just as he began to wonder if Gordon had lost his voice again, he finally spoke up. 

“Why didn’t you tell me about any of this earlier?” Gordon asked. He almost sounded more confused than hurt, though Barney certainly wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d been more upset.

“Like I said, I assumed she’d called and told you everything,” Barney explained, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. “I wasn’t proud of how I'd handled that, and I figured you were rightfully pissed at me on her behalf for bein’ such an ass, so I just kinda… used my shift reassignment as an excuse to avoid you for a few days.”

He attempted to shrug, and then his shoulders slumped as he was reminded of yet another heavy regret. “I didn’t know three days was gonna turn into twenty years,” Barney said quietly, hoping Gordon could hear the apology in his words.

“For what it’s worth, it felt like less than a week to me,” Gordon replied, with just a hint of deadpan humor. “And I had much bigger problems to worry about for most of that time.”

For the first time since before their argument, Gordon’s smile reached his eyes, and Barney found that he was able to offer an equally genuine smile in return.

After a long silence, Gordon spoke again, hesitation evident in his voice.

“What happened after she decided to leave?”

Barney rubbed the back of his neck again. Right, they hadn’t exactly wrapped up that story. “She wouldn’t even let me go to the airport with her,” he said with another deep sigh. “Just packed a bag and left. Didn’t tell me when she’d be back. And she’d never…” He drew in a shaky breath. “I didn’t expect her to _leave_ , Gordon. And I still can’t help but wonder if she…”

“She wasn’t going to break up with you,” Gordon interjected, almost as if he’d read Barney’s mind.

“What makes you so sure?” Once again, Barney appreciated what Gordon was trying to do, but Lauren had never run off like that before, and then she hadn’t talked to either of them for three days, apparently. What else was he supposed to think?

“She probably just thought some time apart would be good for you. I'd talked her out of taking off like that… at least three or four other times, that I can remember,” Gordon confessed.

Huh. He’d had no idea. Barney suddenly felt a new appreciation for how close Lauren and Gordon actually were—er, how close they had been, once. 

A beat later, Gordon added, “Also, her mom had been nagging her to go home around that time anyway. Something about her cousin Lucy’s graduation from Columbia or NYU or wherever it was? She wasn’t going to go, but I guess she… changed her mind.”

Barney’s mouth dropped open. “And why didn’t I know about any of this?”

“You had that two-day training and she wasn't scheduled to work. She got lonely and invited me over.” Gordon shrugged. “We talked.”

For all Barney knew, Gordon was making this up just to make him feel better, but… no, Gordon had always been a terrible liar, and he also didn’t seem to recognize the significance of the memories he was sharing. He _had_ to be telling the truth. 

And that meant Lauren hadn’t been planning to leave him. She would’ve come back.

“I was gonna send her flowers,” Barney murmured, his voice thick with emotion. 

Barney felt Gordon place a comforting hand on his arm again as he continued, “Y’know… just to tell her I loved her and that we were gonna figure things out. But I ended up bein’ so busy with the new shift assignment and whatnot…” He swallowed hard. “I never got around to it. And then it was too late.”

“You couldn’t have known what was coming, Barn.” Gordon’s words were gentle, another absolution that Barney hadn’t realized how badly he’d needed to hear.

He found himself at a loss for words as some of that regret seemed to evaporate, leaving him feeling lighter and safer than he had in eons, so he merely nodded in response. Gordon nodded back and shifted to give him some physical space, seeming to sense that he’d made a breakthrough.

Barney took advantage of the silence to collect his thoughts. They’d reached a crossroads, and he had a decision to make.

God, he had been so desperate to hide from his own lies and guilt that he’d never allowed himself to imagine what it might actually feel like to talk about Lauren with the only other person alive who truly remembered her… who almost definitely remembered her more clearly than he did, in fact.

It felt devastating and terrifying and incredible all at once.

Barney was struck by a new, different kind of guilt as it finally sank in that, from Gordon's perspective, it must feel like only a few months had passed since he’d last seen Lauren alive and well. It was no wonder, then, why he was so desperate to know what had happened to her. This wasn’t an old wound for him; he was still actively grieving. 

Lauren had been his friend, too.

The last time Barney had spoken to Lauren, she’d asked about Gordon. Even with everything else going on around them, she'd spared a thought to wonder if he was safe. 

The sour taste of the bald-faced lie Barney had told her bit at his tongue again as he internally debated where to go from here. Gordon had given him so much closure that he hadn’t even asked for and, frankly, didn’t deserve. Maybe it was time to return to the favor.

The more Barney thought about it, the more strongly he felt that that Lauren would’ve wanted Gordon to know the truth. Lying to her all those years ago hadn’t protected her. And this was different, anyway; Gordon already knew that Lauren was gone.

Barney’s memories of that horrible day, which had been demanding more and more of his attention lately as Gordon’s presence had made it harder to keep them buried, were bubbling closer to the surface than ever before.

He was so _tired_. He didn’t want to lie anymore.

He wasn’t going to lie anymore.

“Do you really wanna know what happened to her?” Barney asked. He could feel and hear his heart rate skyrocketing, and his hands were beginning to tremble. His body’s fight-or-flight response was kicking in, but for once, he wasn’t going to let it get the best of him. 

Gordon was quiet for a long moment. “Only if you want to tell me,” he finally answered, though one glance at his expression of cautious anticipation confirmed that he was holding back, presumably for Barney’s sake.

“I don’t,” Barney replied. He saw Gordon open his mouth to reply and shook his head, cutting him off. “But I think I have to. I’m _never_ going to be ready to talk about this, if I’m bein’ honest with myself, but I probably oughtta tell someone to get it off my chest… and that someone should be you.” He smiled sadly as he repeated Gordon’s earlier words. “Because you knew her.”

Gordon mirrored his expression and nodded solemnly. “Thanks,” he whispered, as if Barney was about to give him a gift, rather than another terrible burden that he would have to carry with him for the rest of his life. 

“This is gonna be hard to hear,” Barney warned him. He told himself that he was protecting Gordon by giving him one last chance to back out, but… eh, who was he kidding? That wasn’t true.

He glanced down in surprise as Gordon took hold of his good hand—the one that wasn’t partially encased in a cast—and clasped it between both of his own. “I’m right here,” Gordon reassured him, as if he’d read Barney’s mind once again. “You’re safe. You’re okay.”

Vaguely, Barney recognized those words as his own. Half a lifetime ago, he’d offered the same reassurances to Gordon as they’d huddled on the floor of his dimly lit office in Sector C and waited for one of his panic attacks to pass. Twenty years later, Gordon was simply returning the gesture.

Somehow, this gentle reminder that Gordon still remembered the person he had once been, long before the Incident and the war and the Combine and Civil Protection had reduced him to a husk of his former self, made Barney feel like it was really, _finally_ safe to let himself go back there.

He’d made the right decision.

Barney closed his eyes as fragmented but vivid memories of the day after the Incident began to claw their way out of the deepest recesses of his memory. Everything felt overwhelming, and he found that he wasn’t sure where to start.

“Gimme a minute, okay? I’ve been repressin’ this for a long time now,” he joked weakly, in a last-ditch effort to comfort himself with humor.

Gordon squeezed his hand. “Take all the time you need.”

* * *

_“Jesus Christ, Doc, pull over!”_

_“Maybe there’s a more deserted one up the road somewhere! We can’t afford to be seen!” Bennet yelled from the back seat of the stolen SUV. Barney whirled around to face him._

_“We’re in freakin’ rural west Texas! ‘Up the road somewhere’ could be an hour away, and we’re runnin’ on fumes here!” He didn’t wait for a response before he turned back to Simmons._ “Pull over, _goddammit!”_

 _Simmons complied by slamming on the brakes, forcing Barney to brace himself against the dashboard as they screeched into the parking lot of the Texaco station._ ‘So much for not attracting attention, _’ he thought, glancing warily at the two other cars parked in the lot as the vehicle came to a stop._

_Suffocating, dry heat flooded into the SUV the second he opened the passenger side door. Barney shrugged off his damaged security vest, allowing it to crumple into a heap on the floor. He gestured for the others to remove their lab coats and name badges as well. The disaster had undoubtedly made national news by now. They needed to be careful._

_As he stepped out of the vehicle and stretched, Barney glanced over his shoulder to find all three scientists staring at him, awaiting instruction._

_“We can’t stay here for long,” Rosenberg cautioned._

_“No shit, Doc,” Barney replied as he fumbled for his wallet. He breathed a sigh of relief as when he flipped it open and discovered that he still had his winnings from last week’s poker night. That ought to be enough for them to get by for a while._

_Barney wasn’t sure when or why they’d all decided he was in charge, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to waste time arguing about that. He distributed a handful of bills to each of his companions, without even bothering to count them. What were they going to do, grab the cash and make a break for it?_

_They were all in this together now. They could pool resources._

_“Simmons, get gas,” he directed. “Rosenberg, go in and see if you can buy a gas can or two and have Simmons fill those too. Grab some food while you’re at it; dunno how long it’ll be before we can stop again. Bennet, for the love of God, find some way to get that goddamn logo off the side of the car. I’ll help ya out in a minute. There’s somethin’ I gotta do first.”_

_Without waiting around to see if the scientists followed his instructions, Barney made a beeline for the lone payphone by the side of the nearly deserted highway, silently thanking God as he felt for loose change in his pockets. With shaking hands, he picked up the receiver, fed some quarters into the coin slot, and dialed 2-1-2…_

‘Shitshitshitshit,’ _he thought, panicking as his mind suddenly went blank. He kicked a loose chunk of asphalt out of sheer frustration before collapsing against the metal frame of the phone box, as he became acutely aware of just how exhausted he was._

_He hadn’t slept in… at least 24 hours, probably. The gash under his eye was bleeding again, and it stung. Everything hurt. It was no wonder he couldn’t think straight._

_Just as he was about to give up, Barney managed to remember the other seven digits and dialed them frantically, desperate to complete the call before he could forget again. He had to get this right. He only had enough change to try once._

_The phone rang, and rang, and rang, until finally,_ finally _someone answered. “Hello?”_

_“Lauren? Lauren! Are you okay? Are you safe? What’s—”_

_“Oh my God, Barney, is that–is that really you?” Lauren began to sob as she tried to ask a thousand questions at once. “I–I thought you were dead! The news… Black Mesa… they said… it’s_ gone, _Barn! It’s just gone! What–what_ happened?”

_He shuddered as he remembered feeling the heat on the back of his neck from the blast, the shaking of the car, the screams of the panicked scientists…_

_“Experiment… something went wrong,” Barney choked out, feeling suddenly overwhelmed as all the horrific things he’d witnessed began to feel_ real _for the first time. “Anomalous Materials.”_

_Lauren gasped, and Barney realized a couple seconds too late that he probably shouldn’t have told her the truth. Then again, did it really matter now?_

_“Where are you?” she asked in a shaky voice. “Is Gordon with you?”_

_“He’s…”_ ‘He’s dead,' _he thought._ 'I left him behind.' _God, he couldn’t tell her that. “No, he’s not with me, but I’m sure he found a way to get out.” Barney swallowed hard. “He’s smart. He’ll be okay.”_

 _“You didn’t answer—"_

_Barney cut her off. He needed to think fast; they didn’t have much time. “I can’t tell you where I am. It’s not–it’s not safe. I need you to listen to me, honey. Please, please just trust me,” he pleaded._

_“I trust you.” Her voice sounded so small, so far away, and so scared. Barney found himself blinking back tears as he willed himself not to think about the very real possibility that he would never see her again. He had to warn her…_

_“Stay in New York,” he instructed. “You’ll be safer there. It’s–it’s about to get bad. They opened a–a portal or somethin’ and… listen, get a gun, okay? I’ll come find you as soon as—”_

_He heard a loud crash in the background of the phone call._

_“What was that?” he asked._

_“I don’t know,” Lauren said softly, and then Barney’s blood ran cold as he heard the unmistakable crack of a gunshot on the other end of the line. It was impossible to tell where it was coming from, but it was close. Too close._

_He heard Lauren stifle a scream. “Someone’s in the house,” she whispered, her voice trembling._

_“Hang up_ now _and call 911!” Barney hissed. He felt a twinge of bitterness as the words left his lips. His level of trust in authority figures with guns had taken quite a hit in the last 24 hours._

_But this was different. This had to be different._

_There was another crash. Closer, this time. And then another. And another. He could still hear Lauren’s heavy breathing. Jesus Christ, she was probably paralyzed with fear._

_And there was nothing he could do from here._

_“Lauren, honey, put the phone down and hide. You’re gonna be okay.” He tried to keep his voice calm, despite his mounting panic._

_Another crash._

_His heart was in his throat. What was happening? Why was it happening_ now?

 _He wanted—_ needed _—to believe that this was a coincidence. It_ had _to be a coincidence._

‘Just like the security doors?’ _nagged the exhausted, paranoid little voice in the back of his mind._ ‘And the computer system? And the trams? And the Sector G access elevator?’

 _“Are you somewhere safe? Try to get somewhere where they can’t see you.” He wasn’t sure if Lauren could even hear him, but dammit, he needed to do_ something…

_No response, and then the all-too-familiar sound of boots hitting the floor. Lots of boots._

_The crackle of a military radio._

_And that’s when it hit him. This wasn’t just a home invasion._

_There was no hiding from this._

_“No,” he whispered, a split second before a single gunshot rang out._

_The sound echoed in Barney’s ear. He remained frozen on the spot with shock until the ringing faded and he realized he could still make out some shuffling sounds on the other end of the line._

_He held his breath and listened closely, still hanging onto a tiny, impossible sliver of hope. He heard breathing, so maybe…_

_“Yessss…” rasped an eerie, distorted male voice. “It is most… unfortunate.” There was a click and the line went dead._

_Barney slammed down the receiver and ran._

_The SUV was running next to the pump, its Black Mesa branding freshly blacked out. The scientists were all watching him, waving frantically as he approached._

_“Floor it!” Barney yelled as he vaulted into the passenger seat and yanked the door shut behind him._

_“Calhoun, what—”_

“Drive!”

_Rosenberg hit the gas, and Barney clenched his shaking hands into fists as he willed himself not to break down. He felt blood running down the left side of his face from that stupid open wound, and he found that he didn’t care enough to wipe it off._

_God, he’d failed_ so many _people._

_Lauren, gone. Gordon, gone. All those people back at Black Mesa… gone. It didn’t feel real yet, but it would soon enough._

_His eyes glazed over as he stared blankly through the windshield at the seemingly endless stretch of highway before them. He felt eerily calm as a chilling realization washed over him: He didn’t want to be around when this all sunk in._

_He didn’t want to be around at all, anymore._

_But for the moment, he still had three people counting on him for their survival, and he’d be damned if he was going to fail them too._

_They’d put themselves at risk to save him. He couldn’t leave them behind._

_Not yet._


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for very brief, vague mention of self-harm/suicide. Also, I promise this is the last chapter before a scene/POV change. I have no regrets about how long this ended up being, but it's definitely time to wrap up this particular arc.

“So… yeah,” Barney said, his shoulders slumping with relief and exhaustion as he concluded his story. “We kept goin’ for a couple more days until we hit Florida, and I’ll tell you the rest later if you want.”

He shivered as he vividly recalled that feeling of utter horror and helplessness once again. “That voice…” he whispered, “it still haunts me, Gordon. I can’t really describe it, but it almost… it didn’t sound _human_.”

At some point, Gordon had wrapped an arm around Barney’s shoulders again, holding him together while he recounted the worst day of his life in a vaguely detached, objective way. Barney hadn’t been able to bring himself to look at him the whole time he’d been talking, but he felt like he needed to check in now.

“How’re ya holding up?” he asked. When Gordon didn’t respond, Barney shifted and craned his neck in an effort to catch a glimpse of his friend’s face. He hissed as the action sent a bolt of pain shooting through his chest.

Great. His last dose of morphine was wearing off.

Barney found that Gordon looked considerably better than he’d expected him to, all things considered. His pale features were etched with pain and he was staring off into space, clearly distressed, but at least he wasn’t crying. 

For that, Barney was immensely grateful. It would’ve been so much harder to maintain that necessary detachment if Gordon had completely broken down.

He opted to rest his head against Gordon’s shoulder again while he gave him some more time to process. He was dog-tired and he expected his emotional hangover to last well into next week, but he was also proud of himself. He’d gotten through it.

He’d finally told someone the truth.

“God, Barney,” Gordon whispered a moment later, shattering the silence. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Instinctively, Barney physically recoiled from the words that felt like a punch to the gut. Even though he’d sort of seen this coming, that didn’t make Gordon’s misplaced words of sympathy any easier to stomach.

“That!” Barney snapped. “That right there is _exactly_ why I never told anybody this before now.”

Gordon immediately yanked his arm away, almost as if he had been burned, and he nearly slid off the side of the bed as he scrambled to put some distance between them. Barney winced as he forced himself to sit up on his own accord, having lost his anchor once again. 

Jesus Christ, how did Gordon _still_ not understand this?

Another minute or two passed in tense silence before Barney’s anger faded, leaving him feeling ashamed of his outburst. He rubbed the back of his neck in an effort to assuage his own discomfort before attempting to apologize.

“Sorry, Doc… Just a bit touchy after all that, I guess.”

“Help me understand,” Gordon implored him, while still carefully keeping his distance. “It’s just not—is there some piece of this that I’m missing?”

Barney tried to give Gordon the benefit of the doubt while he took his time crafting an answer. On the off chance this wasn’t just a classic case of Gordon missing obvious social cues, he wanted to choose his words carefully to make sure he got through to him this time. 

“Best way I can think to explain it,” he said with a deep sigh, “is that the whole sympathy thing really rubs me the wrong way. ‘I’m sorry’ is what you say to people who experienced traumatic shit that was completely beyond their control. People like Eli, or Alyx, or every single living person who wasn’t at Black Mesa that day.” Barney drew in a sharp breath. “But what happened to Lauren…”

He felt tears welling up and quickly blinked them away. “That was my fault, Gordon. I put her at risk, one way or another. They were probably already on their way because of all the things I’d told her, but…”

“Things? What things?”

“About the rumors,” Barney explained, a note of frustration creeping back into his voice. “She’d been askin’ a lot of questions, so I told her some of what I knew about the weird shit goin’ on in the facility. Those Lambda Complex scientists who kept disappearing, cover-ups related to safety regulations… you know, stuff like that. Stuff she wouldn’t have known about otherwise, that I’m pretty sure I signed an NDA about at some point.”

He ran a hand down his face and sighed again. “I mean, you know we were both kinda conspiracy theorists, but I never thought…”

Gordon scooted closer and opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, but Barney cut him off before he could say it. He needed to make his point. 

“Look, fact is, the military or whoever went after her in New York, just a few hours after they nuked Black Mesa. They had to have a reason for doin’ that, because random extrajudicial killings of civilians didn’t become commonplace _that_ quickly.”

Barney felt Gordon shiver, which he supposed was fair, because… yeah, that was a weird thing for him to say so casually. It was true, though. He wondered if Gordon was having second thoughts about wanting to hear all the gory details of the war. 

“And so,” he continued quickly, before Gordon could dwell on his previous comment, “I never could stand the thought of a bunch of people tellin’ me how sorry they are for my loss and how it wasn’t my fault and blah blah, whatever, when I knew that wasn’t true. If I hadn’t been so careless, maybe she would’ve had a fightin’ chance in New York. She’d have been safe there, in the city. She’d have had the baby… and maybe I’d have caught up with ‘em eventually…”

All of a sudden, he was choking back tears again, less successfully this time. Even after so many years had faded his memories and estranged him from his own emotions, he still missed Lauren _so goddamn much._

Another wave of grief crested through him and then receded, leaving him feeling simultaneously hollow and terribly guilty. He hated to be reminded that he'd never properly mourned for the tiny person he hadn't met, but who had technically existed, and who had been half _him._

The sheer _wrongness_ of that had eaten away at him for years, and he still had no idea how to rectify it. Everything had gone to hell before all that had really had a chance to sink in, and he feared that if he let it sink in _now,_ fully acknowledging that loss of a truly innocent almost-life would destroy him all over again. 

As Barney took deep, painful breaths to compose himself, he noticed that Gordon appeared completely oblivious to his distress. His friend’s expression of deep thought suggested that he was preoccupied by some desperate need to come up with an alternative explanation for Lauren’s death that would somehow absolve Barney of all blame. 

On one level, Barney knew and appreciated that Gordon was just trying to make him feel better, like any good friend would. On another level, though, he was more than a little bit irritated. Did Gordon _seriously_ not realize—or did he not care?—that he’d been engaging in this same wishful thinking for the last two decades? What brilliant theory did he expect his stupid MIT-educated brain to come up with that Barney hadn’t already considered?

Eventually, Gordon halfheartedly suggested, “Maybe they went after everyone’s families?”

Barney reluctantly let go of his resentment and decided to humor him. Maybe it would help to let him get this out of his system. “I mean, I guess it’s possible,” he conceded, “but I never heard of that happenin’ to anyone else.” He paused. “Also, I think Lauren might’ve already been on some kinda watchlist.”

“What makes you say that?” Gordon was eyeing him with suspicion that he knew he deserved.

“A week or two before the Incident, she mentioned that she thought some creepy government agent-lookin’ guy was followin’ her around the facility, watchin’ her work and stuff. Always starin’ right at her. Middle-aged guy, widow’s peak, always wore a blue suit… I mean, I never saw him, but she gave a pretty clear description.” Barney shrugged. “I kinda blew her off because, you know, Black Mesa was always crawling with suits, but maybe…”

He trailed off as he registered that Gordon had gone white as a sheet. His wide eyes were darting back and forth, as if they were tracking the movement of something Barney couldn’t see, and his body was stiff and still, save for his breathing and a slight shaking of his shoulders. 

The whole display was eerie as hell, and Barney had absolutely no idea how to respond.

“Doc? You okay?” he asked, tentatively shaking Gordon’s frozen arm with his good hand. Gordon glanced down but otherwise didn’t respond, and then he slowly crossed both arms across his chest and seemed to curl in on himself, all while staring blankly into space. 

Barney looked on in concern for another few seconds before it finally hit him: Gordon had to be freaking out because he thought Lauren had been targeted because of her association with him.

Oh, Christ.

The theory made sense, kind of, except that it didn’t explain why she’d been followed before the Incident and it didn’t explain why they’d killed her.

Barney shook Gordon’s arm again and breathed a sigh of relief when his friend snapped out of his trance.

“Hey, c’mon, don’t blame yourself,” Barney reassured him. “If they thought she had info on you, they’d have brought her in for questioning, not… you know. It was _definitely_ part of the cover-up. They must’ve known I’d told her stuff or maybe she saw somethin’ at work that she wasn’t s’pposed to see, and they didn’t want her to talk… or, who knows, maybe you’re right that they went after everyone’s families.”

Gordon looked unconvinced, but Barney pressed on. “And anyway, how would knowin’ your opinions about… I dunno, uh… which series of Star Trek was the best have helped the military apprehend you, exactly?” He forced a natural-sounding laugh, hoping to put Gordon at ease. “Plus, they already had you, or at least I thought they did.”

Gordon quirked an eyebrow, no doubt in response to the oddly specific example.

“That was the last conversation I can remember you two havin’, all right?” Barney explained, offering a lopsided shrug when his injured shoulder refused to obey his command to move.

He fell quiet as he allowed himself to recall the fading details of what he considered to be the last normal day of his life. Lauren and Gordon had talked him into watching Galaxy Quest after he’d gotten home from training, and then they’d stayed up half the night afterwards arguing about Star Trek, even long after he’d gone to bed. 

Every single time Kleiner had mangled something with a teleporter, he’d thought about that damn pig lizard in that damn movie. It was almost funny, in retrospect, that they’d all spent their last night together watching a movie about a bunch of questionably competent regular people who suddenly had to fight a race of evil aliens.

Come on, universe. Wasn’t that just a little too on the nose? 

“Actually, that… that wasn’t our last conversation,” Gordon said, jarring Barney from his thoughts. He spoke very slowly, as if he was actively trying to retrieve a memory that was still just barely out of reach.

Barney watched with anticipation as Gordon’s haunted expression gradually transformed into a grin. “Right before I went home, she asked, just out of the blue… she asked if I thought you’d be a good dad.” He paused to laugh at himself. “God, I really am the most oblivious person on the planet sometimes, aren’t I?”

Huh. Yep, that was classic Gordon, all right.

“So, what’d you tell her?”

“Obviously, I told her you were great with kids,” Gordon answered. “I’d seen you with, uh… Alyx, and I knew how much you wanted to start a family and give your kids all the things you wished you’d had growing up. I… I _definitely_ thought she was asking for completely hypothetical, very distant future-planning reasons, though, so we didn’t really dwell on it.”

Barney wanted to be excited about this new insight into Lauren’s mindset before she’d left, but so far, he mostly just felt hurt. “So, what, was she having second thoughts about havin’ kids with me or something?” he asked. Sure, they hadn’t planned on getting such an early start, but he’d thought they were on the same page about the whole general idea.

“No, no, I don’t think that’s why she asked,” Gordon quickly clarified. “I remember her thanking me and saying that she just needed to hear someone else say… what she already knew.” He chuckled at himself again. “And I was very tired and a little drunk, so I just said goodnight, went back to my place, and never gave it a second thought.”

Well, that timeline made sense, since she’d told him about the pregnancy the following morning. Barney briefly wondered how things might have gone differently if, say, Lauren and Gordon had had a longer conversation, before he remembered that she probably still would’ve died if she’d been in the facility.

In a weird way, that thought was almost comforting now.

“Would’ve been about seven more months,” Barney murmured, before he cracked a rueful smile and added, “Poor kid woulda had a December birthday.”

Without missing a beat, Gordon replied, “You would have thrown them a half-birthday party in June to make up for it.” Barney felt Gordon rest a hand on his shoulder again. “You and Lauren would’ve been amazing parents, Barn,” he said softly. 

Normally, Barney would’ve felt compelled to roll his eyes in response to Gordon’s cheesy sentimentality, but for once, he found it genuinely touching. Even though none of this really mattered anymore, he would’ve been lying if he’d said the affirmation wasn’t nice to hear… and at least Gordon hadn’t thrown out another misguided ‘I’m sorry.’

Several minutes passed in silence before Gordon spoke again.

“It wasn’t your fault.” He said it with such intensity and conviction that for a split second, Barney was almost convinced.

Almost. 

He sighed. “Gordon—”

“No, hear me out on this,” Gordon interrupted sharply. “I get that you made some potentially dangerous decisions and violated your NDA. Both of you probably should’ve been fired. But… _fired,_ Barn. Not _executed_. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lauren was on some kind of… watchlist.” Gordon shuddered. “But she wouldn’t have died if other, more powerful people hadn’t made much more dangerous decisions.”

Barney wanted to believe him. Really, he did. But something about Gordon’s tone put him on the defensive; was he _seriously_ supposed to hold his tongue and let Gordon assert himself, once again, as an expert on things he knew next to nothing about, as if he could just swoop in and fix everything like he'd tried to do with—

Oh, right, stumbling into complex situations with virtually no context or preparation and somehow managing to make them his bitch was kind of Gordon's _thing_ now. So much for that argument. 

“Well… what if they traced the phone call?” Barney countered after an uncomfortably long pause.

Gordon barely needed a second to think before responding. “For one thing, I’m not sure that that’s how tracing phone calls works. If anything, they’d have tapped her phone to find _you_ , not the other way around. And for another… would you really have forgiven yourself if you’d never tried to call her and tell her you were okay, just because there was a slight risk that it would compromise your location?”

Damn Gordon and his stupid logic.

Barney figured he could keep bombarding him with follow up questions—How did they know where to find her in New York? Why did they kill her while we were on the phone? Doesn't that seem just a _little_ suspicious to you?—but at the end of the day, he had to admit that there was no use in arguing. He felt lousy enough that he was certain Gordon would outlast him in a debate, and aside from that, he knew what he was _really_ hiding from.

Perhaps if they’d had this conversation twenty years ago, Barney would’ve believed Gordon right away. Now, though… he’d let his grief and guilt about what happened to Lauren completely define the last two decades of his life. He felt oddly attached to those feelings, because he wasn’t sure what his life would be like without them.

If he was being honest with himself, the thought kind of scared him. He felt like he’d all but forgotten how to form meaningful relationships in the years since Black Mesa—Civil Protection had a way of beating that instinct out of a person—and most of his connections that pre-dated the Incident felt like they were hanging on by a thread, especially now.

He’d been putting up walls for an awfully long time; first to keep his past a secret, and then later to protect the Resistance while he did unspeakably horrible things for the supposed greater good. How was he supposed to come back from that? Dark humor and shared trauma could only get him so far with other people.

If his self-imposed loneliness no longer served a purpose, he feared it would crush him. 

“Was the resonance cascade my fault?” Gordon asked suddenly, interrupting Barney’s inner monologue.

“Gordon, I _know_ someone’s had this conversation with you already,” Barney said, not even bothering to hide the exasperation in his voice. _Lots_ of people had had this conversation with Gordon already, himself included. “Of course it wasn’t. You were just the guy who went to genius school for a zillion years to put on the goofy suit and push the thingy into the thingy.”

He thought for a moment before continuing, a bit more seriously, “I’m not sure this can even be pinned on person. Maybe Dr. Breen, since he authorized the whole damn thing. But you were just livin’ your life and followin’ orders and then…”

Oh. Goddammit.

“If the resonance cascade wasn’t my fault, then this wasn’t yours.”

Barney wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of smug looks from Gordon, but he had to admit that he’d walked right into that one. He resisted the urge to ask Gordon when he’d gotten a _psychology_ degree from MIT because… well, even if his credentials weren’t quite right, the guy knew how to make a point. 

He sighed and leaned back into his pillow. “Maybe if you keep tellin’ me that, one day I’ll believe it.”

“I will, and you will,” Gordon replied, before his expression abruptly changed from proud to serious. “I know you said you don’t know if the military went after other peoples’ family members, but can I ask a semi-related question?”

Barney internally groaned. He wasn’t sure how much more of this he could take. It felt like he'd been reliving his trauma for _hours,_ and at this point, it was anyone’s guess whether his body or his mind would give out first.

Still, he couldn’t bring himself to refuse Gordon’s request. They were being honest with each other now, and at least this time, the guy had had the courtesy to give him some warning. 

“Sure, I guess,” Barney finally replied, shoulders slumping as he resigned himself to the fact that Gordon was most likely about to rip open another old wound. 

“Do you have any idea what… what happened to John? Or my parents? I know it’s a long shot, but…”

Oh, Jesus. The tentative note of hope in Gordon’s voice was absolutely heartbreaking, and Barney suddenly wanted nothing more than to give his old friend a hug. He hated to admit that he didn’t have the answers Gordon was looking for this time around… and even worse, he strongly suspected that nobody else did, either. 

Barney found that his position and limited range of movement prevented him from offering any meaningful physical gestures of comfort, so he settled for resting his good hand on Gordon’s closest arm before responding.

“Honestly, I have no idea. I kept an ear out for news of ‘em for a while, but never heard anything. Figured at some point that either they were all dead, or they were laying low for their own safety. Bein’ your next of kin was probably more of a liability than an asset, unfortunately.”

He paused as something clicked in his memory. “That’s what you were gettin’ at earlier when you were about to accuse me of erasing someone else from history, huh?”

Gordon had the decency to look ashamed as he nodded, and Barney decided not to dwell on that any longer. They both knew what they’d done wrong and seeing as they’d made it this far, all of that would be water under the bridge eventually. 

“Wasn’t on purpose,” Barney clarified. “Just was tryin’ to protect them, and then we all kinda moved on.”

Barney was prepared for Gordon to ask more questions about his family, but to his surprise, Gordon merely sniffled a couple times before abruptly changing the subject. 

“So, that’s from Black Mesa?” he asked, leaning forward and pointing at the raised, curved scar on Barney’s left cheek. 

The topic change was more than a little jarring, but Barney decided to go with it. “Yep, that is a 100% authentic resonance cascade souvenir battle scar, my friend. Knocked my head against something when I fell down an elevator shaft. Sliced my face right open. Damn thing bled like the dickens.”

Barney brushed his fingers across the scar again, remembering how the wound had stubbornly refused to heal for weeks after the Incident. It had seemed, at the time, like a constant, mocking reminder of everything he had lost. He’d expected it to scar a lot worse than it actually had. 

“You fell down an elevator shaft?” Gordon looked absolutely horrified. Barney could infer from context that there was a story there, and he had absolutely _zero_ interest in hearing it; his relationship with elevators was already complicated enough, thank you very much. 

“I mean, I was in the elevator itself, so it’s not like I free fell all the way down to the bottom, but… yeah. Knocked me out for a while, and then I woke up to find my face covered in blood and aliens everywhere. Whole day kinda went downhill from there.” He laughed dryly.

“Sounds rough,” Gordon deadpanned, following his lead. Then, he gently brushed his hand across the scar on Barney’s right temple that had left him missing a patch of hair. “What’s the story here?”

“Grazed by a pulse rifle shot on my 38th birthday. Occupational hazard, eh? Hell of a lot more memorable than blowin’ out candles.” He’d always tried to look on the bright side with that one; at least _missing_ hair couldn’t go gray on you in your mid-fucking-forties. 

Gordon didn’t laugh; instead, he silently gestured towards a set of thin, jagged parallel lines on Barney’s exposed bicep that didn’t match any of his other scars or fresh injuries.

“Cat, three-ish years ago,” Barney explained curtly. Gordon opened his mouth, presumably to ask him to elaborate, and Barney cut him off. “Don’t wanna talk about it.”

Thankfully, Gordon let the issue drop. Barney felt compelled to crack a joke about their impromptu show-and-tell session, but before he could collect his thoughts, Gordon distracted him by gently grasping his right wrist and flipping his arm over, exposing the vulnerable underside.

Barney felt a lump form in his throat as Gordon slowly traced a finger along the thin white line that ran from the inside of his wrist to the middle of his arm. It was so faint that he was surprised Gordon had even noticed it. Had he seen it on his own, he wondered, or had someone else told him to look for it? 

Once again, Gordon didn’t have to say anything for Barney to know what he was asking.

“Regrettable impulse decision. September 4, 2003. I was… not in a good place.”

A quick glance at Gordon’s face confirmed that he recognized the significance of the date. It would’ve been Lauren’s 25th birthday. She would’ve been about six months along. Gordon traced the line back down to his wrist and then squeezed his hand.

“Don’t worry, that was the only time I ever tried,” Barney added quietly. “After that, I had Alyx to think about. Didn’t want her losin’ anyone else, you know?” 

Barney caught another glimpse of Gordon’s concerned, haunted expression and considered saying something else to try to reassure him that he really was planning on sticking around, but he could no longer deny that he had officially reached—hell, he’d far _exceeded_ —his mental and emotional capacity for painful self-disclosure for the day, and perhaps for the foreseeable future.

More than anything, he needed this conversation to be _over,_ but from previous experience, he knew better than to shut Gordon out too quickly.

“So, how ‘bout you?” He asked, turning to humor to change the subject again and hopefully break the tension. “You’ve got an awful lot of battle scars for a guy who had an HEV suit to protect his baby-soft skin.”

Much to Barney’s relief, Gordon picked up on the cue that it was time to move on and played along.

“Mostly manhacks, hunters, the occasional fast zombie… the sharp stuff would get through the joints in the suit.” He shrugged, and then pointed to a small scar on his neck that looked fresher than the others. “This one’s from the first time I tried to shave with a straight razor, though.” He smiled sheepishly. “Go ahead, laugh.”

Barney chuckled, but he also empathized. “Yep, that’s one of those annoying little things about post-apocalypse life… they quit makin’ disposable razors. You get used to it after a while though, and hey, we’ve all been there.” He grinned. “Gotta keep that signature Freeman facial hair nice and tidy somehow, right?”

Gordon sighed. “Honestly? It’s a huge pain to keep up with, but that’s how people know me now, so I don’t think I have a choice.”

“So, you’ve got kind of a… Hitler’s mustache situation goin’ on?” Barney enjoyed another laugh at Gordon’s expense, despite the twinge of pain that radiated through his chest. The completely unamused look on his friend’s face made the fleeting agony absolutely worth it. 

“Seriously, Barney?”

“What? You tried a thing for a while, you decided ya hate it, but now it’s become your signature thing so you’re stuck with it. At least in your case it’s a good look.” A beat later, he added, “You really should keep the beard, Doc. Clean-shaven, you look like a teenager. Or at least, you look like one of those creepy adults who used to play teenagers on TV.”

To drive his point home, Barney gasped and dramatically clutched at his chest, pretending to be scandalized. “If you shave that thing off, people will start thinkin’ _Alyx_ is the cradle robber!”

Gordon fixed him with a glare that could’ve melted steel before dissolving into a fit of laughter.

 _‘Bingo,’_ Barney thought as he joined in. Making Gordon laugh had always been the easiest way to snap him out of one of his moods; it was nice to know that after so many years, he still knew which buttons to push. Maybe now, they could finally wrap this up.

“It’s a good thing you’re already in the hospital, Calhoun, because—” Gordon failed to catch his breath long enough to finish the threat before the moment had passed.

As their laughter died down, they lapsed into a companionable silence.

A quick glance at Gordon’s face revealed that he was lost in his thoughts—good, the plan still seemed to be working—so Barney decided to do some self-reflection of his own.

He was thirsty, he was _starving_ , and he was more than a little overdue for another dose of morphine, but despite all of that, he felt… liberated, almost.

His nagging sense of guilt and that persistent empty feeling of grief were both still there, and probably would be for the rest of his life, but for the first time in years, he felt something akin to excitement when he thought about the future. 

Sure, Gordon had missed out on twenty years of history, but he also remembered so many little details about the past—Black Mesa, their friendship, their colleagues, _Lauren_ —that had long since faded from his own memory, or that he’d never even learned in the first place. Not to mention, an awful lot had changed in the short time since Gordon had returned… and yet he was still the same guy, somehow, under all the battle scars and trauma.

Barney had always been such a sucker for nostalgia. 

He and Gordon had some serious catching up to do, and with the world getting safer and safer with every passing day, maybe they’d finally have a chance to do it.

Before Barney could really reconnect with anyone, though, he knew he was going to have to mentally prepare himself. Emotional vulnerability wasn’t exactly his defining quality these days (not that it ever had been). He needed to forgive Gordon and even more importantly, he needed to forgive himself. Or, perhaps more realistically, he needed re-evaluate how much guilt he actually needed to hang onto in order to continue living with himself. 

It was _possible,_ he supposed, that Gordon was right, and it was time to give himself permission to let go of some of his self-blame. And he'd believed him when he'd said he was going to remind him of that until he finally forgave himself. The guy was nothing if not persistent, but then again, he'd always been that way. 

God, he'd missed Gordon. 

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a little pissed about how you went about it,” Barney said softly, “but… thanks, Gordon.” The man beside him nodded once, prompting Barney to continue, “Maybe you’re right that twenty years was long enough to wallow, and I was already thinkin’ about her all the time. Hard not to, now that…” He swallowed hard. “You know, now that you’re back.”

Gordon looked him directly in the eye with an expression he couldn’t quite read before asking, “What can I do to help?”

“To be honest, just… leave me alone for a bit,” Barney replied. He looked down at his lap. “Not forever,” he clarified, “but I gotta do some soul-searching and I think I gotta do it alone.”

“What should I tell Alyx?” Gordon asked, after a brief silence. Barney couldn’t detect any resentment in his tone; perhaps Gordon had, for once, managed to accept an uncomfortable request at face value instead of dissecting every word in search of hidden meaning.

Huh. Good for him.

At the mention of Alyx, Barney realized that he'd actually forgotten about the shocking confession that had kicked off this whole pity party. His earlier apprehension about the catastrophic impact this could have on Alyx’s opinion of him came flooding back. He knew her well enough to recognize that there was really only one way for him to make this right, and he couldn't stand the thought of losing her respect. 

“I want to tell her myself,” he answered, finally. “I think I _have_ to tell her myself, especially if she’s pissed at me for not tellin’ her before. But, like I said… I’m gonna need some time.”

Gordon nodded. “I’ll tell her that. I think she’ll be okay waiting if she knows you’ll talk to her eventually.” He paused. “Is there anything else I should keep in mind?”

“Yeah, actually,” Barney replied, suddenly remembering one other lingering concern he hadn't yet shared. “Sorry to ask this, but… please don’t say anything to Kleiner. As far as he’s concerned, this conversation never happened and you still know nothing. He and Eli were on my case about this for ages and… I dunno, I guess I’m not ready to let him know they were right. Or tell him what actually happened.”

He felt relieved when Gordon nodded again. He hated to ask him to lie, especially since he was so notoriously terrible at it, but he wanted to deal with that on his own terms as well. 

Although Eli and Kleiner had mostly given up on trying to get him to talk about his past after the first couple of years, and they had even gone so far as to reluctantly contribute to his deception, the subject had come up once in relatively recent history. When Barney had returned to Kleiner’s lab after he’d sent Gordon on his way to Black Mesa East, shortly after their reunion, Eli had addressed him directly over the video monitor.

“You know he’s going to have questions, when he has a moment to rest," he’d said gently, while surreptitiously glancing over his shoulder to make sure Alyx was out of earshot. "You’re going to have to tell him, son."

In response, Barney had mumbled something about needing to get back to his shift, before abruptly flipping a switch and ending the transmission. He’d shoved his Civil Protection mask back over his face—for once, he’d been grateful for the opportunity to hide behind the damn thing—and stomped out of the lab without a backwards glance.

He imagined that Eli was looking down on this whole exchange from wherever he was, lips pursed and eyes sparkling with satisfaction. Never in a thousand years would Eli have said “I told you so” out loud, but if he was watching, he was _definitely_ thinking it. 

Meanwhile, Gordon seemed to have taken Barney’s prolonged silence as his cue to leave. He’d risen to his feet and was hovering awkwardly at the edge of the bed, presumably waiting for some sort of formal conclusion to their marathon whatever-the-hell-that-was.

“I dunno how long it’ll take me to be ready to talk, but I’ll let ya know,” Barney said. He leaned back and tried—with minimal success—to get comfortable, now that he had the whole bed to himself again.

After offering a single nod of acknowledgment, Gordon started to make his way towards the door. He stopped in the middle of the room to stretch his stiff arms and legs, and something about watching him move like that made Barney's already sore bones and joints ache even more.

God, he felt like absolute shit.

“Hey, Doc?” he called to get Gordon’s attention. His friend stopped in his tracks and turned around to face him once again. “Think you could send someone in here with some drugs and a snack? I’m so hungry I could eat a freakin’ strider.”

“Will do,” Gordon said with a slight grin as he reached for the door handle, and then his expression turned solemn and his gaze dropped to the floor.

“Before I go… I just want to say again that I’m sorry. Not about… not about what happened to Lauren, exactly, so don’t yell at me… but for how I yelled at you earlier. I clearly need to work through some things too, and I promise… I won’t let that happen again.”

Barney paused to let Gordon’s words sink in. This felt like the right note to end on, and he wanted Gordon to know how much the apology meant to him, even though he didn’t have the energy to put those complex emotions into words.

“Apology accepted, Poindexter,” he replied, in lieu of a more articulate expression of his appreciation. 

At the sound of the nickname Lauren had bestowed upon him all those years ago, Gordon looked up with a sad smile that Barney imagined matched his own. They locked eyes for a brief, heavy moment, before Gordon nodded once, slipped out of the room, and gently closed the door behind him.

Despite his considerable physical discomfort, Barney managed to doze off long before the nurses arrived with morphine and dinner.

He slept better than he had in years, and he dreamed of Lauren. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so, I think the total projected number of chapters is finally correct. I've gotten a bit behind on writing due to a new job and some other miscellaneous life admin stuff, but I've sketched out enough of what comes next to feel like I know how long it's actually going to be. Thanks for bearing with me!
> 
> Also, there's definitely a prequel idea in here somewhere. Is it halfway written in my head? Yep. Will it ever be fully fleshed out, written down, and shared with the general public? Ehhh. Limiting myself to one project at a time for now.


	10. Chapter 10

“This is where he said to meet him, right?”

Gordon fished a crumpled note out of his jeans pocket and briefly scrutinized it before he nodded in affirmation. Alyx smiled as she felt him squeeze her hand.

“You ready?” he asked. His voice was surprisingly steady, even though she could feel his entire body vibrating with nervous anticipation.

Alyx squeezed back, not quite trusting herself to speak.

Although Gordon hadn’t told her much about what he’d talked about with Barney, he had warned her that his story would be hard to hear, and the hours since they’d found his note had crawled by at a snail’s pace. Even in her restless sleep, Alyx had been plagued by a cloud of uncertainty and curiosity and foreboding. By dawn, she’d nearly reached a breaking point.

She held her breath as Gordon raised a fist and rapped on the door to the staff room, the shave-and-a-haircut rhythm reverberating sharply through the empty hallway. 

The two answering knocks came almost immediately, as if the person on the other side of the door had been waiting patiently for that particular greeting. The heavy metal door slid open, and Alyx and Gordon found themselves face-to-face with Barney Calhoun for the first time in weeks.

For a second, Alyx almost didn’t recognize him. She’d gotten so used to seeing Barney limping around the base, looking utterly exhausted, disheveled, and miserable that it was a bit of a shock to see him smiling, clean shaven, and finally free of the assorted casts and bandages that he’d sported during his long recovery.

Barney broke the tension by pulling Gordon in for a one-armed hug, which Gordon immediately turned into a full-on embrace. Alyx could pinpoint the exact second when Barney resigned himself to his fate and relaxed into his old friend’s arms, though she couldn’t quite make out the words the two men exchanged in low, rumbling voices.

“I missed you too, Doc,” Barney said as they broke apart. With a warm smile, he gently nudged Gordon in the direction of the seating area behind them and turned his attention to Alyx.

She stepped forward to envelop her oldest friend in a bear hug, which he enthusiastically returned. “Easy there, kiddo,” he cautioned. “Remember, I’m old and fragile. Maybe let up on the squeezin’ a bit, yeah?”

Alyx could tell from his tone that he was teasing, but she relaxed her grip anyway and rested her head against his shoulder, content to savor the moment. This felt familiar; this felt _safe._ Maybe everything was going to be okay after all.

“How’ve you been?” Barney asked. He whispered the question so softly that it took Alyx a second to register that he had spoken at all. 

“Good, mostly,” she answered, after a beat. And that was true: The reconstruction effort was going well, Resistance morale was at an all-time high, and she and Gordon had grown closer than ever since they’d started talking openly about their pasts.

But still, something had been missing. “I just… I really missed you, and I was so worried…”

“I’ve missed you too, Al. And I’m doin’ okay now, I promise,” he reassured her, squeezing her a bit more tightly as he spoke. “Thanks for givin’ me some time.”

“Of course,” she whispered.

He didn’t need to thank her for waiting. Those long weeks of simultaneously knowing and not-knowing had threatened to drive her crazy, but she’d seen enough trauma over the years to understand that these things took time.

Barney’s entire body tensed as he registered her pounding heartbeat, an unmistakable sign that her nervous anticipation was returning. He paused briefly, in a last-ditch effort to stall for time, before reluctantly stepping back and gesturing for her to sit down as well.

As Alyx made her way over to the comfortable, overstuffed armchair in the back corner of the staff room that had once been her father’s favorite, she stole a glance at Gordon. He was perched on the very edge of the worn green loveseat positioned perpendicular to the armchair, his right leg predictably bouncing with nerves as his eyes tracked Barney’s movement across the room.

With every bit of slowness and stiffness that one might expect from a man who had only recently escaped the confines of a hospital bed, Barney closed the door, shuffled over to the loveseat, and lowered himself down next to Gordon so that he was settled between them.

Alyx watched his façade of casual friendliness give way to a somber expression as he turned to face her.

“So…” Barney sighed deeply and rubbed the back of his neck. “I believe I owe you an explanation.”

Before she had a chance to tell Barney that he didn’t _owe_ her anything, a subtle shake of Gordon’s head told her to let that comment slide. Besides, she and Gordon both knew that even if she wasn’t technically entitled to an explanation as to why he’d been lying about his past for… well, for her entire life, she _desperately_ wanted to hear one. 

“Lauren… was my fiancée,” Barney started softly, cutting right to the chase without quite looking her in the eye. Alyx nodded, encouraging him to go on; Gordon placed a supportive hand on his shoulder. “We’d been together about two years. Engaged for a little less than a month.”

Alyx felt a lump forming in her throat as she waited as patiently as she possibly could for Barney to continue. She wasn’t used to seeing him so vulnerable and soft-spoken, and even though he hadn’t yet told her anything she didn’t already know, hearing him admit the truth somehow made it all feel _real_ for the first time.

She almost expected him to skip straight to the end of his story—to rip the band aid off, tell her what happened to Lauren, and call it a day—but instead, Barney’s unfocused gaze and wistful half-smile suggested he was lost in happier memories.

After what felt like an eternity, he finally spoke again.

“I proposed to her in April. April 23, 2003. I’d just gotten the ring and I was gonna wait until later in the year, but then she got all excited about watchin’ the Lyrids together and I just… I dunno, it felt like the time was right.”

Barney abruptly captured Alyx’s gaze and held it, his eyes sparkling with something she couldn’t quite place.

“I got so distracted plannin’ out the whole thing—romantic picnic under the stars, what I was gonna say, all that stuff—that I completely forgot I’d agreed to babysit you that night. So, I pawned you off on Poindexter here”—Barney jerked a finger in Gordon’s direction—“without tellin’ him what I had in mind, because… well, you’ve seen how shit he is at keepin’ secrets.”

Alyx was relieved to hear that Barney could crack jokes about the whole situation without a trace of bitterness in his voice. They shared a brief laugh at Gordon’s expense.

“Lauren was always nuts about sky stuff,” Barney continued, after a moment. “Growin’ up in the city—New York, she was from New York—she never got a chance to really see the stars as a kid. We used to go topside and watch the night sky all the time. No light pollution, no noise, heat was almost bearable once the sun went down… God, that was the best part about livin’ in that fortress, hands down.”

Barney let out another deep sigh, closed his eyes, and bowed his head.

Gordon mouthed silently, “Give him a minute.”

Alyx nodded and absentmindedly twisted the cube on her mother’s necklace as she found herself distracted by a sudden onslaught of long-forgotten childhood memories.

She’d been fascinated by stars as a kid, especially after the Incident; even hundreds or thousands of miles from home, the celestial bodies in the night sky had been a comforting, consistent presence. Sometimes, when all the other adults had been too busy to entertain her, she’d sought out Barney and begged him to take her outside to go stargazing. 

He’d always shut her down with the kinds of flimsy excuses that even a child could see right through; “I hear it’s gonna get cloudy real soon,” or “Uncle Barney’s tired tonight, Al, but how ‘bout I read you a story, huh? Any story you want. I’ll even do the voices.” No matter how much she’d pouted and fussed, he’d never budged.

All these years later, she finally understood.

The sound of Barney clearing his throat brought her back to the present, and she desperately hoped he could see the long-overdue apology written across her face.

His subtle, silent nod told her that maybe he had, but the moment lasted only briefly before he looked away and began to fidget with the buttons on the cuff of his flannel shirt. 

“What did she look like?” Alyx asked, suddenly desperate to fill the silence.

A second too late, she wondered if that had been okay to ask, but she really wanted to know so she could develop a mental image of Lauren.

“She was beautiful,” Barney answered, “and she was a tiny little thing, too. Just barely five-foot-two. She had short brown hair—cute short—and… God, she had the prettiest blue eyes I’d ever seen.”

Alyx glanced at Gordon and found that his sad smile matched Barney’s. She could tell that he was blinking back tears as he gently rubbed Barney’s shoulder, comforting and encouraging him while he answered her next question before she’d even had a chance to ask it.

“She could come off as kinda standoffish before she got to know ya, but once she came outta her shell, she was _hilarious._ Sweet, loyal… brilliant, too. Helluva lot smarter than me.” He let out a self-deprecating snort. “If I’m bein’ honest, I still have no idea what she saw in me.”

Gordon pursed his lips and rolled his eyes, and Alyx mirrored his look of exasperated concern. Even though Barney’s tone had been light and joking, it seemed they’d both picked up on the undercurrent of honesty behind his last comment, and they were in agreement that Barney was selling himself short.

They could circle back to that later, though. In an effort to keep the conversational momentum going, she decided to ask her next burning question. “How did you two meet?”

Barney smiled. “A couple’a weeks after I started in Sector C, I she caught me and one of the scientists fighting over the last piece of chocolate cake, so she started savin’ a slice for me every day.”

“She worked in the cafeteria where we usually ate,” Gordon chimed in. “She’d been there for… a year or so before you started, right?” Barney nodded, and Alyx shot Gordon a grateful look for providing some additional context.

“I remember thinkin’ “geez, that’s an awfully sweet thing to do for the new guy,” but it didn’t really click,” Barney continued, his face slowly breaking into a wide grin. “‘Bout a week later, she cornered me and demanded to know why I hadn’t asked her out already and could I please hurry it up, because her boss was gettin’ onto her about the cake thing. And… well, the rest is history.”

Alyx burst out laughing, and Gordon chuckled as well, even though it was clear that he’d heard this story countless times before. She’d always pictured Barney as more of a suave ladies’ man in his younger years, and she found it adorable that Lauren had essentially been the one to ask him out instead of the other way around. 

It wasn’t long, however, before the moment passed and Barney’s expression turned solemn again.

Alyx’s stomach dropped as she watched his shoulders heave with a heavy sigh before he looked up at her, his eyes filled with tears. “I was gonna spend the rest of my life with her, Al,” he murmured in a broken voice.

Having found herself at a loss for words, she glanced at Gordon, who was wrapping a blanket around Barney’s shoulders in the same way he often did when she was upset. When they made eye contact, Gordon instantly read the unspoken question on her face and nodded once, giving her permission to ask it out loud. 

She took a deep breath before gently asking, “What happened to her?”

“She, uh…” Barney hesitated and brushed his fingers across the scar on his left cheek. When he let his hand fall back into his lap, Gordon took hold of it and squeezed it.

“She was killed shortly after the Incident,” he finally explained, his words clipped and terse. “Military got her. She didn’t stand a chance.”

Alyx remembered Gordon’s words of warning from their conversation the night before: _“Don’t say ‘I’m sorry.’ Just trust me. It will_ not _go over well.”_

It took her a minute to formulate a response that didn’t include that phrase. Ultimately, she settled on, “God, Barney. That’s… terrible. I can’t even begin… I can’t imagine what that must’ve been like for you.” She paused to wipe away a single tear that had escaped and fallen down her cheek. “I can tell you loved her a lot.” 

Gordon and Barney exchanged a heavy look, all but confirming her suspicions that there was more to this story than Barney had elected to share with her. She looked on in silence as the two men appeared to have an entire conversation without uttering a word, which ended with Gordon clumsily enveloping Barney in a hug. 

She averted her gaze to give them some privacy, and her heart broke as she registered the sound of gasping, muffled sobs. She was pretty sure she’d never heard or seen Barney cry before, and she figured it was a good thing Gordon was there, because she would’ve had absolutely no idea how to handle that.

Barney had always been there for her when she’d needed him, but he’d never asked her to return the favor. He’d always seemed so… self-assured and in control, even when the future seemed bleak and everyone else was falling apart. 

She suddenly wondered if _anyone_ had been there for Barney before Gordon had returned, or if he’d always been taking care of everyone else and getting next to nothing in return. Had he at least confided in her dad, she wondered, or maybe Dr. Kleiner?

With an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, she considered the possibility that Barney had tried to reach out to her for help, at some point, and that she’d missed or misread the signs. Was that why he’d never told her the truth about Lauren?

Without making eye contact with Gordon, lest he try to discourage her from asking any of the questions that were threatening to spill out, Alyx slid towards the edge of her chair and reached out to place a hand on Barney’s knee. It was an awkward gesture, but she didn’t want to come on too strong while he was so vulnerable. 

As soon as she touched him, Barney looked up from where his face had been buried in Gordon’s shirt and rubbed the back of his neck in an effort to compose himself. 

“Barney,” Alyx said softly, “thanks for telling me about this. I know it was hard for you… but I want you to know I’m here for you if you ever want to talk about it. I lost my mom that day too, remember?”

“‘Course I do,” Barney murmured, his voice thick with emotion. “How could I forget?”

One look at Gordon told her that he could read the unspoken question on her face; his eyes widened, and he shook his head, silently begging her not to ask it.

Despite Gordon’s best efforts at subtlety, however, the slight movement drew Barney’s attention. He glanced between them once, then twice, before realization dawned across his face. Gordon set his jaw in a grim line and Barney took a deep breath.

He switched his attention back to Alyx, his red-rimmed eyes filled with guilt. “I never told anyone what happened to her until I talked to Gordon a few weeks ago,” he confessed. “To tell you the truth, I haven’t really talked about her at all since she… died.”

He swallowed hard. “I’ve always blamed myself for… what happened, and it was easier to just… try and move on without having to hear other people talkin’ about her and feelin’ sorry for me, I guess.” With a forced, humorless laugh, he added, “Survivor’s guilt’s a helluva a thing, isn’t it?”

Alyx wasn’t sure what to make of that admission. She wanted to understand and accept Barney’s explanation, but he had said himself that the military had killed Lauren, just like they’d killed hundreds—maybe even thousands—of other innocent people. Her death couldn’t have possibly been his fault. Unless… 

She raised a hand to her mouth to stifle a gasp as the delayed realization hit that Barney must have been present when Lauren had been killed. He’d tried to save her, somehow, and he’d failed.

That horrifying possibility seemed to be the only logical explanation for his self-blame. 

And Barney was right: Survivor’s guilt really was a hell of a thing. She’d spent enough time and energy trying to help Gordon deal with his own misplaced guilt about the Incident that she could easily imagine the kinds of ‘what if’ questions that must have tormented Barney for over two decades.

Her heart broke for him all over again.

Alyx instinctively leaned forward as Barney slid closer to the edge of his seat and reached out to take her hands in his. “I don’t want you to _ever_ think I kept this from you because I don’t love or trust you, Al,” he said. “I’d just been carryin’ on like this for so long that it was basically second nature… at least, ‘til Gordon came back and suddenly the clock was tickin’ on me.”

Once again, his tone wasn’t accusatory or bitter; he was simply stating a fact that he seemed to have come to accept.

That was another mystery solved, then. She’d always found it strange that Barney hadn’t wanted to spend every waking moment catching up with his best friend as soon as they’d had an opportunity, but now it all made sense. He’d been afraid Gordon would blow his cover.

To be fair, that fear had apparently been justified. 

Relief washed across Barney’s face as Alyx squeezed both of his hands and smiled through her tears. “I understand, Barney. Like I said… I’m just glad I can be here for you now.”

She reached out to give him a quick hug, which he returned. For a while, the room was silent, save for a few quiet sniffles.

“So, the three of you… you were pretty close, I take it?” Alyx asked, in an effort to lighten the mood. She’d gotten that impression, but Gordon had insisted that Black Mesa stories were off-limits until they had a chance to talk to Barney, so she didn’t really have any proof to back up that assumption.

Barney quirked a brow and shot Gordon a somewhat incredulous look out of the corner of his eye.

“Believe it or not, Barn,” Gordon responded dryly, “I _am_ capable of keeping my mouth shut when I’ve been explicitly instructed to do so.”

Alyx had to suppress a grin when Barney huffed and rolled his eyes in response, seeming to accept his own role in the colossal miscommunication that had led them to this point. Both men exchanged nostalgic smiles before turning their attention back to Alyx.

Barney was the first to answer her question. “Yep, we hung out all the time… maybe two, three nights a week? Crossed paths at work pretty often too, between meal breaks and social stuff and Kleiner lockin’ himself outta his damn office all the time.” He chuckled and elbowed Gordon as he added, “You know, we even went on vacation together once.”

“‘Vacation’ is a bit of an overstatement,” Gordon interjected. “It was a three-day trip to Albuquerque, and I spent most of it attending an excruciatingly boring off-site work training while Barney and Lauren hit the town without me.”

As soon as Gordon mentioned Albuquerque, Alyx realized she’d heard this story before… or at least, she’d heard part of it.

“Was that the trip where you threw up in the car?” she asked, just to make sure she was remembering correctly.

Alyx giggled and Barney _cackled_ as Gordon’s face flushed with embarrassment.

“You told her about that? Seriously?”

“What?” Barney replied with joking indignation. “You’re always goin’ on about how you’re just a plain ol’ regular guy like everybody else, and hey, I’m pretty sure our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ never over-indulged at a hotel bar and barfed in the backseat of a Camry. I was _humanizing_ you!” He crossed his arms and smirked. “You’re _welcome.”_

“Yeah, well… at least I didn’t _scar you for life_ on that trip!”

“Oh, we’re doin’ this again, huh? For the last time, I swear, we thought you’d left for the day! Also, I seem to recall that you swore you’d quit givin’ us shit for that after you puked in Lauren’s car, so…” Barney trailed off and stuck out his tongue, prompting yet another wave of laughter from Alyx.

With a start, she realized that _this_ was why so many of Barney’s stories about his friendship with Gordon had felt ‘off’ when he’d shared them over the years, as if he never quite hit the punchline he’d been building up to or he’d somehow forgotten key details halfway through. 

Despite Barney’s best efforts to seamlessly edit Lauren out of the narrative of his life, her presence had been too significant for her absence not to be felt. 

By the time she finished processing that, Gordon and Barney had moved on to rehashing an old argument about which of them had been at fault for destroying Lauren’s favorite frying pan in a hilarious-sounding kitchen accident.

For the time being, at least, all traces of the earlier melancholy mood had vanished.

Alyx tucked her feat underneath herself and shifted to get comfortable in her chair, since it appeared Gordon and Barney weren’t going to run out of Black Mesa stories anytime soon.

Although they were ostensibly telling them for her benefit, she noticed as time went on that they almost seemed to forget she was there, which allowed her to simply watch them without being expected to respond.

This was a rare opportunity, and she savored it. Even though she’d heard bits and pieces of some of these stories before, they took on a whole new character now that Lauren was included, and now that she knew Gordon as an actual person instead of an overblown legend. She felt like she'd been waiting for a moment like this for her whole life, and now that it had arrived, she was utterly captivated.

Sometime later, after laughing along with Gordon and Barney through a particularly lengthy, uproarious recounting of the Great Prank War of 2002, Alyx decided to get up to stretch her legs. The whole morning had been pretty intense, and she needed some air.

When she returned a few minutes later with a clearer head and a glass of water, neither man batted an eye, absorbed as they were in their shared recollection of Barney’s short-lived and largely unsuccessful attempt to learn German, a language that Lauren, like Gordon, had apparently studied in college.

“Fine, yeah, it was a huge fuckin’ waste of time and money, but c’mon… I thought you two were talkin’ about me behind my back! Did y’all really expect me to just take that sittin’ down?”

“We would _never_ have talked about you behind your back,” Gordon insisted, feigning offense before his face split into a shit-eating grin. “We spoke German so we could talk about you in front of your face!”

“ _Fick dich,_ Gordon,” Barney responded with a matching expression and an obscene hand gesture.

“Ah, of _course_ that’s the only phrase you remember.” Gordon snorted. _“Arschgeige.”_

Alyx had caught glimpses of this side of Gordon before, as they’d developed their own brand of witty banter, but with Barney, his deadpan humor was a little more sarcastic and a little more vulgar. It was almost as if some of the more colorful parts of Barney’s personality had rubbed off on him.

She already liked— _loved,_ even, though she had yet to say that out loud—the version of Gordon that she had gotten to know so well over the last few months. This was the first time, however, that she felt like she could really picture him as he’d been at Black Mesa, before the world had gone to hell.

A few minutes later, Alyx nearly choked on a sip of water when Barney revealed that he’d once gotten Gordon drunk enough to perform karaoke at one of the Black Mesa Security Force’s infamously trashy office parties.

Gordon cut him off before he could share which song he’d chosen, but regardless, the thought of Gordon singing _anything_ in public was enough to send her into hysterics. After all, this was a man who hadn’t been able to look her in the eye for two days after the first time she'd overheard him singing in the shower.

Eventually, the topic of conversation changed once more, this time to something about airplanes and movies that Alyx had absolutely no hope of keeping up with, considering how little exposure she’d had to pop culture after the world had all but ended. She tuned out their conversation in favor of simply watching them again.

This time, she focused her attention on Barney, who had also come alive. Alyx had spent nearly her whole life watching him default to either stoicism or dark-humored sarcasm in most of his interactions with others, but with Gordon, he was so much more dynamic that it made her heart hurt to think about how much his trauma had changed him.

She learned that when Barney laughed— _really_ laughed—it wasn’t the loud, booming sound she’d come to associate with him. It was so intense that it was almost silent.

For the first time in quite a while, she was able to look past his scars and wrinkles and the graying hair at his temples and remember what he’d been like in his twenties, back when he’d only been her favorite babysitter instead of her closest friend and personal superhero.

If that version of Barney somehow still existed, maybe there was hope for all of them. 

“—would’ve been a lot less complicated if you’d listened to Lauren more often, Barn. Remember the blind date fiasco?”

Gordon’s use of the word “date” instantly grabbed Alyx’s attention. Sure, she’d heard enough stories about Gordon’s pre-apocalypse dating life to gather that it had not been terribly active, but she was more than a little curious to hear additional details straight from the source.

After all, she had a feeling Barney’s earlier stories might have been a _little_ exaggerated for comedic effect.

“Oh, come on!” Barney retorted. “Rachel was always talkin’ about the cute redhead in AnMat and you and I both know it had been ages since you…” He trailed off and cleared his throat, seeming to suddenly remember that Alyx was in the room.

After an awkward pause, during which Gordon turned several shades of red, Barney resumed defending himself. “Look, obviously _now_ I know she meant Dr. Cross, but c’mon, man!” He threw up his hands in exasperation. “I tried! And what’s this even got to do with Lauren, anyway?”

“You know how she apologized to both of us on your behalf since you were too chicken? She made it _very clear_ that she’d tried to talk you out of setting us up in the first place.” Gordon chuckled, clearly pleased to have the upper hand again. “God, I would’ve _loved_ to have been a fly on the wall when you had to admit to her face that she was right.” 

For Alyx’s benefit, he added, “Lauren was usually pretty easygoing, but she had a certain… flair for the dramatic, I guess you could say, when she had something to be smug or exasperated about. Which was… often, obviously” he joked, jerking his head towards Barney, who responded with a good-natured scowl. 

Gordon flashed a mischievous grin as he straightened his back and theatrically crossed his arms. In an exaggerated falsetto with an accent that Alyx couldn’t quite place, he proceeded to half-yell, “Barnabas Calhoun, I swear to _God…!”_

He trailed off into a fit of laughter before he could finish the sentence, and Alyx followed suit. She could only assume that Gordon had been doing an impression of Lauren, which was funny enough on its own, but also…

“Barney is short for _Barnabas?!”_ she gasped between giggles. “Wow, how did I not know that already?”

“Old family name,” Barney muttered, without looking either of them in the eye. “Wouldn’t’ve picked it if given an option.”

Both Alyx and Gordon immediately stopped laughing and exchanged worried glances, as they both sensed that Barney was genuinely upset. 

Gordon hesitantly placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You okay?” he asked softly. “Did I… did I cross a line?”

“Nah, you’re fine. That’s not it.” Slowly, Barney looked up from his lap, his expression filled with pain. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, your Lauren impression was and has always been pretty terrible, but it just reminded me…” He heaved a heavy sigh. “It’s been so long that I’ve all but forgotten her voice.”

With a watery laugh, he added, “And God knows she definitely didn’t sound like _that…_ but it was close enough to jog a memory, you know?”

Before Alyx even had a chance to blink, Gordon swiftly folded Barney into another tight embrace. Following his lead, she stood up and wrapped her arms around both of them as she fought to keep her own tears from spilling over.

Her heart went out to Barney, but she was also reeling from a painful realization of her own: No matter how hard she tried to remember, her father’s voice would someday fade from her memory, just as her mother’s had.

She wasn’t ready for that. She was pretty sure she’d never be ready for that.

They remained huddled together for quite a while, with Gordon gently stroking the back of Barney’s head where it was tucked against his chest, Barney hanging onto Gordon for dear life as he shook with the effort to keep his emotions in check, and Alyx slowly rubbing circles on Barney’s upper back with one hand while holding Gordon together with the other as she silently grappled with her own grief.

Eventually, Barney broke the spell with a loud sniffle and moved to sit up. Gordon let go of him and hooked an arm around Alyx’s waist as she did the same.

She let Gordon pull her down onto the loveseat and she settled comfortably into the space he had managed to create between himself and Barney. She wanted to keep one hand free in case Barney needed her, but she intertwined the fingers of her other hand with Gordon’s.

He squeezed her hand; she squeezed back.

When she finally turned to face Barney directly, she found him staring straight through them rather than _at_ them, as she had initially expected. His faraway gaze suggested he was lost in his memories again.

“I don’t even have a picture of her,” he whispered, after a moment. “I did, at first… I had that photo of all of us on New Year’s in my wallet, remember?” He was clearly addressing Gordon at this point, even though he was still staring blankly at nothing in particular.

“The sober one,” Barney clarified with a soft chuckle as he finally brought his gaze up to meet Gordon’s. His face fell again as he continued, “I only managed to hang onto it for a few weeks, though. ‘Til Bennet got mugged. Freak thing at a gas station, right?” He sighed. “But he had most of our money… which was in my wallet.”

Alyx wasn’t sure if Gordon’s warning not to say the words ‘I’m sorry’ still applied, but just in case it did, she thought carefully before responding, “That’s awful, Barney. God, that must have been…” She couldn’t think of a single word that could even begin to capture his pain, or her own.

“You would’ve fought them for it,” Gordon mumbled, so quietly that Alyx was pretty sure he’d meant to keep that thought in his head, not voice it out loud.

“I’d have let ‘em kill me,” Barney responded without missing a beat. She tensed and she felt Gordon shudder. Barney’s tone was slightly joking, but the look in his eyes was deadly serious. It chilled Alyx to the bone to realize how close Barney must have come to giving up.

She reached out with her free hand and took hold of his, hoping the simple gesture would somehow convey all of the emotion she couldn’t put into words. She took several deep breaths, encouraging him to breathe along with her as she often did for Gordon when he felt overwhelmed.

Sure enough, after a couple minutes of silence, save for their breathing in unison, his body physically relaxed and he flashed her a grateful look.

“Anyway,” Barney said with a rueful smile as he let go of her hand, “that’s more than enough depressing shit for one day, and I invited you here to deliver an apology, so I guess I oughtta go ahead and wrap that up.”

The shift in his tone took Alyx by surprise, but the reassuring caress of Gordon’s thumb against her hand told her to just go with it.

Barney didn’t wait for their acknowledgment before forging ahead in the conversation. “Look, I wanna say I’m sorry for bein’ a bit of a dick to you guys about the whole”—he gestured vaguely in their direction—“you know, the you-guys-dating thing.” 

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, this is never gonna stop bein’ just a _little_ hilarious,” he continued, a ghost of a smirk flashing across his features, “but I know I’ve also been a one-note act with the jokes lately, and I want to make sure you know it’s not because I’m not over-the-moon happy for y’all. It’s just, well…”

Alyx realized what Barney was trying to say and suddenly felt horribly guilty. How could they have been so insensitive, flaunting their relationship when so many people around them had lost so much? Sure, she hadn’t known how it would affect Barney until recently, but… Gordon had to have had at least some idea, right?

As if on cue, she felt Gordon let go of her hand and shift his body so that she was no longer able to lean on him for support.

“Should we… uh, would it help if we… toned it down a bit?” he asked. The note of shame in his tone suggested he was having the same thoughts she was. 

“Nah, at least not on my account,” Barney replied. “I mean, I’m guessin’ your neighbors might appreciate it, but seriously, you’re good for each other and you shouldn’t have to hide just to keep me from bein’ an ass all the time because I’m bitter and jealous and tryin’ to drive folks away so I don’t have to deal with my own shit.”

Once again, Alyx considered calling him out for his self-deprecating tone. When he put it like that, he made his own behavior sound so much worse than it actually had been.

Sure, his jokes had gotten a bit repetitive and obnoxious, and she knew Gordon had been hurt that Barney had put up a wall between them, but… could they really blame him, knowing what they knew now?

Barney’s wry smile gave way to a more genuine one as he added, “Means a lot that you’d offer to put a lid on it just for my sake, but I promise… I’m happy for you, even if I suck at showin’ it, and I’m coping. It’s been a process, but I’m gonna be okay.”

“How did you get so wise and introspective all of a sudden?” Gordon asked, echoing Alyx’s own thoughts.

In response, Barney quipped, “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.” When neither of them laughed, he shrugged and clarified, “I mean, not really, but seriously… you’d _never_ believe me.”

Gordon seemed to accept that response, which meant it was good enough for Alyx as well.

“Fair enough,” he said. “Just… let me know what I can do to help.”

Alyx considered chiming in, but she had a feeling that Gordon and Barney were having another intense non-verbal conversation over her head, so she opted not to interrupt.

After a minute, Barney turned to face her before addressing Gordon again. “Mind if I borrow Alyx for a bit, actually? I’ve been sittin’ down way too long, so I’d better get up and move—doctor’s orders, ya know?—and it’d be nice to have some company.”

She felt Gordon shrug. When she swiveled around to face him, he shot her a look of mild amusement, no doubt in response to the strange way Barney had phrased his invitation.

“Sure,” Alyx responded, instead of letting Gordon answer for her. The idea of taking a walk was appealing to her too, and she was eager to embrace this opportunity to catch up with Barney. She’d had a few things on her mind lately that she wanted to pick his brain about.

She stood up and turned around to offer Barney a hand; Gordon also hovered nearby, just in case he needed additional support. Barney mumbled something under his breath about not being an invalid before taking hold of her hand and grunting as he also rose to his feet.

Gordon squeezed past Alyx to give Barney one last hug before they parted ways. “I’m proud of you, Barn,” she heard him whisper; she couldn’t make out Barney’s response, but his misty eyes when they separated told her all she needed to know.

“Catch up with you in a bit?” she asked Gordon. She was relieved when he smiled and nodded immediately; she knew they were going to need to debrief this later, but thankfully, he seemed to be doing okay for the time being. She pressed a quick kiss to his cheek before moving to catch up with Barney, who had already made it to the door.

“Ready to go?” she asked. 

Barney nodded and gallantly offered her his arm. Alyx laughed softly as she took it, basking in the warmth of his smile as they stepped into the hallway together. 


	11. Chapter 11

Although his demeanor remained relaxed and friendly, Barney didn’t seem inclined to chat as he and Alyx traveled a long, meandering path through the base. He didn’t let his pronounced limp stop him from walking with purpose, and each time they turned a corner, Alyx found it just a little bit harder to keep from asking questions. Even once she'd factored in Barney's known tendency to go _well_ out of his way to avoid elevators, this felt… strange. Ominous, almost. 

Several minutes later, as they approached the lobby of the base, Alyx was the first to notice Uriah and Dr. Magnusson coming down the hallway from the opposite direction. She internally groaned and stole a sidelong glance at Barney, who appeared surprisingly unfazed.

So far, they hadn’t had much trouble ignoring the curious glances directed at them by passersby, but Alyx had a feeling a classic Magnusson one-liner—probably something about the irresponsible whimsy of taking a leisurely walk when there was so much _work_ to do—was inevitable, and she _really_ didn’t have the energy to deal with that after the morning she’d had.

Much to Alyx’s continued shock, however, Dr. Magnusson wordlessly raised a hand in greeting as he approached them, and he even appeared to smile. She nearly stopped dead in her tracks when Barney waved back without breaking stride.

Well… that was different. She considered asking Barney if he thought Magnusson had been brainwashed by the Combine, or perhaps replaced with a poorly programmed robot, but then another thought occurred to her: Maybe Dr. Magnusson was actually just being polite, for once.

After all, everyone knew Barney had been going through a lot lately. News of his initial injury had spread quickly, and anyone who had crossed paths with him since he’d left the infirmary had almost certainly picked up on the fact that he was not in a good place, mentally. 

On top of all that, the rumor mill had had a field day with his confrontation with Gordon. Some eavesdropping nurses had spun some pretty wild tales, including at least one version of the story where Gordon lost his temper and actually _yelled_ at Barney. Whoever had come up with that one had really fleshed out the details; Alyx had to concede that at the very least, that person deserved some points for creativity. 

Alyx followed Barney as he led her through a large doorway to access the yard outside the southern entrance to the base. From there, they followed the fence that ran along the cliffside, ducking occasionally to avoid low-hanging branches. The further they traveled from the base, the more nervous Alyx felt.

Why had Barney wanted to get her alone? What did he want to say that he couldn’t say in front of Gordon?

When they reached a gap in the fence, Barney paused and held out an arm, signaling to Alyx that he was ready to stop. She looked on from a slight distance as he ventured a few feet closer to the cliff’s edge before gingerly sitting down in the tall grass with the help of a large rock, which he leaned on for support. Once he’d gotten situated, he turned towards Alyx and patted the empty space on the ground next to him.

“Think this is ‘bout as far as I’m gonna make it today,” he said. “Nice, isn’t it?”

Alyx hummed in agreement as she lowered herself to the ground next to Barney and settled into a cross-legged position. She still wasn’t sure exactly what he had in mind, but she couldn’t deny that he’d picked a fantastically scenic place to rest.

From the top of the cliff, they had an unobstructed view of the entire valley below them, as well as the forest surrounding it. A natural rock formation separated them from the base, creating the illusion that they were in their own little corner of the world, silent save for the sounds of chattering birds, rustling trees, and rushing water from a distant stream.

When Alyx finally tore her gaze away from the scenery, she found that Barney was still watching her, mild concern evident on his face.

“C’mon, Al, relax. I promise I don’t have a hidden motive for draggin’ you out here,” he insisted. “Just needed a change of scenery and thought you might wanna catch up.”

She smiled sheepishly and consciously released some of the tension she’d been holding in her shoulders. “Sorry, Barney… it’s just been an intense morning.”

“Yeah, no kiddin.’”

Alyx waited for him to say more, but once again, Barney seemed to be in no hurry to escape the relative security of silence. 

She took advantage of the lull in conversation to shrug off her jacket. It had been a long time since she’d had an opportunity to truly relax and feel a cool breeze and the warmth of the sun against her skin, and she fully intended to savor the moment.

Barney appeared to be having similar thoughts. Alyx watched as he unbuttoned the cuffs of his checkered flannel shirt and half-rolled, half-bunched the sleeves up to his elbows, revealing a constellation of partially healed scars and bruises. He leaned against the rock that he was using as a backrest, laced his fingers together behind his head, and let his eyes drift closed as he let out a contented sigh.

All in all, he looked happier and more relaxed than Alyx had seen him in a long, long time.

A few minutes later, Barney broke the silence again. “You’ve really been doin’ okay?” he asked, without moving or opening his eyes.

“Yeah…” she answered, “Things have been pretty busy lately, but in a good way, I think. We’ve made a lot of progress in a really short time, and I still miss dad, but… it doesn’t hurt so much anymore, if that makes sense. I think he’d be proud of what we’ve accomplished.”

Barney smiled warmly and nodded. “And Gordon?” he asked, sitting up and turning to face her once again. 

This time, Alyx hesitated. Recently, Gordon had thrown himself into his teleportation experiments with such intensity and drive that she worried he would forget to eat if she didn't check on him during the day. According to Dr. Kleiner, Gordon’s return to his characteristic workaholism was a sign that he was healing, but Alyx wasn’t so sure. She was only letting that slide for now because she was considerably more concerned about how Gordon was coping _outside_ of the lab.

Ever since his conversation with Barney, Gordon’s nightmares had gone from bad to much, much worse. What scared Alyx the most was that he rarely woke up screaming anymore; instead, he would sit straight up from a dead sleep, drenched in a cold sweat and seemingly paralyzed while his eyes frantically tracked the movements of something she couldn’t see.

And as if that wasn’t eerie and frustrating enough, Gordon also categorically refused to talk about those nightmares, even when he was sobbing in her arms or coming down from a dream-induced panic attack. He seemed to think he was protecting her by staying quiet, but… protecting her from _what,_ exactly?

Barney didn’t need to hear all that, though. It wasn’t like there was anything he could do to help Gordon that Alyx hadn’t already tried, and he had enough on his plate already.

So, when she finally answered Barney’s question, all she said was, “He’s fine. Quieter lately, but… fine.”

She knew she was lying, and Barney’s pursed lips and raised eyebrows told her that he _also_ knew she was lying, but for some reason, he decided not to call her on it.

“Glad to hear it,” he responded instead. “Wasn’t sure how stable he was gonna be after our talk and I felt kinda bad that you got stuck dealin’ with him on your own, but I just—”

Alyx cut him off. “It’s okay, Barney. Really. I completely understand, and I’m sure Gordon does too.” A beat later, she asked, “How did that go, anyway?” Since Barney had brought it up first, she figured that was a safe question.

“He didn’t tell you anything?” Barney’s look of disbelief was almost comical. That was the second time Alyx had seen him react like this, and she vaguely wondered if Barney’s lack of faith in Gordon’s ability to keep secrets dated back to sometime before the Incident.

She shook her head. “Nope. All he really said right afterwards was that he was pretty sure you guys were okay and to give you some space. He hasn’t shared any details since then, and he won’t confirm or deny any of the rumors.”

As soon as she mentioned the rumors, Barney violently cringed.

Alyx gulped. “Was it really that bad?”

Barney sucked in air through his teeth and grimaced before he answered her question with another question. “So… remember how you went off on me after that CP raid that just barely missed Black Mesa East, around… eh, ten-ish years ago?”

Alyx involuntarily tensed and looked away as she unwittingly remembered how she’d reacted all those years ago upon learning that her boyfriend, Marcus, had been captured by Civil Protection and taken to Nova Prospekt. Barney had opted to deliver the grim news in person, and in doing so, he’d made himself the perfect target for all of her adolescent rage and grief. 

“What will they do to him?” she’d demanded to know. She’d left Barney with no choice but to tell her the truth about stalkers, too. 

Her face burned with shame as she vividly recalled how she’d punched Barney in the chest, over and over and over, until her knuckles had become bruised and bloody from scraping against his CP armor. She’d called him all sorts of names between hysterical sobs, motivated by sheer blind desperation to somehow place the blame for a cruel, senseless act of violence.

She’d grown up surrounded by death, but that was the first time in her young adult life that a loss had hit a little too close to home.

Alyx opened her mouth to offer a long-overdue apology for subjecting Barney to such undeserved abuse, but he shook his head, cutting her off. “I didn’t bring that up to guilt trip you, kiddo. Trust me, I understood where you were comin’ from, and I didn’t blame you for a second. Still don’t.” He put her at ease with a warm smile, which she returned after the briefest hesitation. 

A moment later, Alyx’s eyes went wide as she suddenly remembered the context in which Barney had purposefully dredged up that unpleasant memory.

“But, uh… yeah,” Barney continued, his expression cloudy again as he confirmed her worst suspicions, “so that’s pretty much how things went with Gordon, except he mostly just yelled at me, and instead of sittin’ there and takin’ it, I kinda… well, I basically told him to go fuck himself a buncha times. Wasn’t pretty. We both said a lot of regrettable shit.”

Barney sighed and scooped up a handful of small rocks, which he proceeded to toss over the edge of the cliff one by one while he collected his thoughts. Alyx’s mind, meanwhile, was reeling from shock. 

It was hard enough to picture Gordon yelling at _anybody,_ much less Barney, and now she had to wrap her head around the fact that not only had he apparently been distressed enough to break down like that, but he’d also kept that from her for _weeks._

She couldn’t decide if she should be mad at him or worried about him. Maybe a bit of both. Mostly the latter, she decided after a little more internal deliberation. Also, in light of this revelation, it was no wonder Gordon wasn’t sleeping well.

He and Barney had made up, though, right? They’d seemed fine earlier, but maybe…

“Don’t worry, we’re okay now,” Barney said, answering Alyx’s next question before she had a chance to finish asking it in her head. “I know he didn’t mean any of the shit he said and neither did I, and we already talked it out. He and I are gonna be fine, just like me and you.”

That was reassuring to hear, but Alyx still wasn’t totally convinced. “You _promise_ you didn’t bring me out here alone to get away from Gordon?”

“Scout’s honor,” Barney replied with a snappy three-finger salute. “I wanna catch up with him too, but first I figured I oughtta give you a chance to ask some more questions without him givin’ you the stink eye.” He paused and chuckled softly. “I know, I know, Poindexter’s just lookin’ out for me, but seriously, I’ll be the judge of whether or not you’re outta line.”

Alyx twisted a few pieces of grass together and gazed across the valley as she mulled over the unanswered questions in her head. She was definitely curious about a lot of things—that nickname, for one—but she didn’t want to bombard Barney with questions after they’d all had such an emotional morning. There would be plenty of time for that later.

“Thank you, but honestly… I can’t think of anything else I’m dying to know right now,” she replied. As an afterthought, she added, “Is it okay for me and Gordon to talk about Black Mesa, though?”

“Yeah, ‘course,” Barney answered, and then his face broke into a grin. “Just keep in mind that you’re only gettin’ half the story from him. Remember, if you ever wanna hear all about the weird and embarrassing shit that guy got up to after hours, all ya gotta do is ask.”

Barney’s comment about different perspectives reminded Alyx of one particular question that had been plaguing her ever since she’d first learned that he had been keeping secrets. She thought about waiting to ask Gordon, but then again, it was possible that he didn’t know the answer.

“You know, actually… I do have a question for you,” Alyx said, hesitantly. 

Barney's grin widened, suggesting that he was eagerly anticipating an opportunity to share something blackmail-worthy about Gordon’s past.

“Ask away, kiddo.”

“Did I ever meet Lauren?”

The name still felt foreign to Alyx, but she figured she and Lauren had probably crossed paths at some point. After all, Barney and Gordon had both spent a fair amount of time with her family outside of work, so it stood to reason that Lauren had joined them on some occasions. Maybe Barney could tell her a story that would jog her memory and make all of this feel a little more real. 

Her question had clearly caught Barney off guard, but he recovered quickly. After a few beats of silence, he shrugged and replied, “Couple’a times, maybe, but nothin’ really stands out. Makes sense that you wouldn’t remember her. Your dad invited her to dinner every now and then, but she didn’t make it all that often.”

Alyx shot him a quizzical look; given how much time Gordon, Barney, and Lauren had apparently spent together, something about that response didn’t quite add up.

“Wasn’t anythin’ personal,” Barney clarified. “She just didn’t know the other AnMat folks all that well, so between that and crazy work shifts and her and Gordon gettin’ on each other’s nerves… she just kinda did her own thing those nights. Think she liked the quiet time.”

Hm, that was interesting. “She and Gordon didn’t get along?” Alyx asked. Based on the stories she’d heard earlier, she’d assumed they were good friends.

“Oh no, they did, at least once they finally warmed up to each other. Problem was, they were so much alike that they used to drive each other up the wall over the _stupidest_ shit.”

Barney chuckled and rolled his eyes. “What really sucked, though, was when they ganged up on me. I mean, Christ, I pronounced ‘espresso’ as ‘expresso’ _one goddamn time_ and it was like they were never gonna let me live it down. Hell, I’d bet good money that Gordon’s _still_ not over it.”

Alyx laughed along with him and made a mental note to remind Gordon about that incident at some point, just to see how he’d react. Seconds later, a delayed realization dawned, and her expression transformed into a sly grin.

“Waaaait a minute,” she teased, “so… you’re telling me your ideal woman was basically a female version of Gordon?”

Barney barked a loud laugh, sending nearby birds scattering from the treetops. “Hey, don’t you go puttin’ words in my mouth. Lauren was _way_ cuter, for starters, not to mention a helluva lot less neurotic.” He looked her dead in the eyes and added, “Better kisser, too.”

“Oh my God,” Alyx groaned as she buried her face in her hands. She’d almost forgotten about that, and somehow, her mental image of Gordon and a younger Barney passionately making out seemed a _lot_ less sexy when Barney was the one to bring it up.

“Hey, he’s the one who broke the Vegas rule,” Barney replied with an all-too-satisfied smirk.

Alyx slowly raised her head to squint at him in confusion. “The… what?”

“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?” In response to Alyx’s blank stare, Barney simply shrugged again. “It’s an old saying. Just, you know, substitute ‘Vegas’ for ‘Christmas party’ in this case.”

“You guys made out at a _Christmas party?”_ Gordon had left out that particular detail, and… wow, even by Black Mesa office party standards, getting drunk enough to make out with your best friend at a festive holiday gathering sounded pretty trashy. Alyx was enthralled. 

“Well, technically it was mostly _after_ the Christmas party, but… actually, ya know what, nevermind. You want details, ask Gordon.” Barney snorted and shook his head, and then proceeded to mutter under his breath, “He fuckin’ started it, anyway.”

Alyx had so many more questions now, and she couldn’t decide if she wanted to press Barney for details or wait and ambush Gordon later… and then, an unsettling thought occurred to her. Barney had met Lauren long before he’d met Gordon, which meant they’d been dating during the Christmas party incident, which would have to mean…

“Aw, c’mon, don’t look at me like that,” Barney grumbled, almost as if he’d heard her doing the math in her head. “Yes, she knew, and she thought the whole thing was hilarious. Pretty sure she was gonna find some excuse to bring it up at our wedding.” He grinned. “Poor Gordon woulda died on the spot, and I’d have been out a best man.”

Alyx let out the breath she’d been holding and joined in his laughter again, thankful that she hadn’t genuinely offended him.

“You know, you were s’pposed to be the flower girl,” Barney continued, suddenly serious again.

“Really?” Even though this felt like a transparent attempt to change the subject, Alyx couldn’t help but take the bait.

“Yep,” Barney replied, popping the ‘P’ and smiling fondly. “It was a job for a cute kid, and hey, when you’ve got one this stinkin’ cute right under your nose,”—Alyx rolled her eyes and dodged Barney’s attempt to ruffle her hair—“you just don’t let that opportunity go to waste.”

“Oh, knock it off,” she mumbled, looking down to hide her blush. As was often the case, she found herself surprised and weirdly impressed by how easily Barney could make her feel like she was a little kid again.

“It’s true, though. You were the most adorable little thing…” Barney shook his head and _tsk tsk’ed,_ before he went in for the punchline. “God, what happened?” he teased, his eyes sparkling with mischief.

This time, it was Barney’s turn to duck when Alyx raised a hand and playfully threatened to smack him. 

As they lapsed into a companionable silence, Alyx stretched her legs out in front of her and tried to process everything that had transpired over the last several hours. Although she hadn't wanted to admit it to herself, she’d been a little afraid that learning the truth about Lauren would completely change the way she saw Barney, or the way he related to her. If anything, however, it seemed to have brought them closer together.

He was still her Uncle Barney, and she’d had some things on her mind lately that she really wanted to talk to him about. Seeing as she was already feeling a little awkward and vulnerable, she figured she ought to seize the opportunity to confide in him before she lost her nerve.

“Can I ask another Lauren question?”

Barney shifted and looked up from where he was braiding several long pieces of grass together in his lap. “Sure,” he said lazily, mirroring her posture as he also extended his legs and stretched.

Alyx took a deep breath. “How did you know you were in love with her?”

Barney sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. Once again, Alyx felt slightly guilty for blindsiding him, but he seemed to take the whole thing in stride.

After a long pause, he replied, “I know this probably isn’t the answer you wanna hear, but I just… knew. I mean, sure, I can remember a few times here and there where it really hit me that she was somethin’ special, but it’s not like flippin’ a switch. Wasn’t for me, anyway.”

“I see,” Alyx said pensively. When she made eye contact with Barney, she could see the unspoken questions written across his face as he scrutinized hers, no doubt searching for some insight into her thought process.

“C’mon… what’s on your mind?” Barney’s expression softened. “You can trust me, Al. If you and Gordon are… I dunno, not workin’ out or you’re at different places right now, that’s okay. I promise I’m not gonna say anything to him.”

“No, it’s not… it’s not that,” she insisted. “We’re good, and… I think I do. Love him, that is. I just haven’t been able to tell him, because…” Alyx sighed and trailed off as she found herself at a loss for a way to describe all of the nagging insecurities that had been bouncing around in the back of her mind for weeks.

Barney leaned over and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, and that was all it took for all of her worries to start spilling out unfiltered. “Like, what if this isn’t real? What if we’re only together because our lives are woven together in the vortessence or because we bonded over shared trauma or because we’re unhealthily codependent or because of what my dad said about—”

“Okay, Jesus, I’m stoppin’ ya right there.” Barney cut her off kindly but firmly. “You and I _both_ know most of that’s bullshit, and if you’re really gonna psych yourself out of makin’ a move— _again—_ then at least quit lying to yourself about why you’re doin’ it.”

Alyx immediately picked up on the note of exasperation in Barney’s voice, and she wasn’t sure whether to cringe or laugh at herself. She snapped her head around to stare at him in shock as it hit her that he was _right._ About _all_ of it. “How did you—?”

“You’re starin’ at my chin so you don’t have to look me in the eye and you’re doin’ that fidgety thing with your hands,” Barney replied with a knowing smile. “So, what’s your hangup here, really?”

Alyx drew her knees up towards her chest and took another deep breath. “What if… what if I tell him, and then he disappears again?” She felt a bit silly, now that she’d said that out loud, but it felt good to get it off her chest.

Barney was silent for a long moment, before he responded gently, “What if you _don’t_ tell him, and then he disappears again?” He turned towards her and opened his arms for a hug. Alyx took him up on his invitation and wrapped her arms around his waist to avoid putting pressure on his bad arm or sore ribs.

“Look, I won’t lie to you,” Barney murmured as he pulled her closer, “I worry about losin’ him too. Freaks me out, not knowin’ where he was all this time.”

A few seconds later, he loosened his grip and pulled away to look her in the eye. “Speakin’ from experience, though… when I lost damn near everyone I cared about, I didn’t wish for a second that I hadn’t loved ‘em.” He closed his eyes and sighed, before he choked out, “I wished I’d told them I loved ‘em a hell of a lot more often, while I still had the chance.”

Neither of them seemed to feel inclined to break the somber silence that followed Barney's confession. Alyx blinked back tears as she watched a wave of emotions play across her oldest friend's face. She got the impression that he had regrets about how he had left things with Lauren, or maybe someone else he had lost. 

Before Alyx had a chance to think of something to say to comfort him, Barney seemed to recover on his own and attempted to defuse the tension. “Look, if you don’t tell him, it’s gonna be an _awfully_ long wait for him to say it first. Not because he doesn’t feel the same way, mind you, but because he’s gotta be overthinkin’ this even more than you are.”

She felt like a massive weight had been lifted from her shoulders. For the first time in quite a while, she experienced nothing but warmth and excitement when she allowed herself to imagine what it would feel like to finally say those words out loud and hear Gordon say them back. 

“Thanks, Barney,” she said, flashing him a grateful smile. “I missed our serious grownup talks.”

That was what they’d called them when she was a kid, and she couldn’t help but continue to use the term semi-ironically. She’d always been able to count on Barney to make time for her and take her seriously when she’d needed to vent—at least until her early teen years, when his Civil Protection service had kept them apart—and she wanted him to know how much she'd loved him for that.

“You know, that brings me to another thing I wanted to talk to you about.” Barney’s expression and tone had gone serious again, and he was rubbing the back of his neck like he often did when he was nervous.

“O… kay,” she said slowly, unsure of what to expect. The sudden shift had really thrown her off. 

“This might come out kinda weird at first, but bear with me here, yeah?”

Alyx nodded and sat on her hands to keep from fidgeting while she waited for Barney to get to the point. For several agonizingly long moments, she could only sit and watch as he rolled and unrolled his shirt sleeves, before he finally took a deep breath, looked her in the eyes, and opened his mouth to speak.

“Lauren was pregnant when she died,” he said, the words tumbling out quickly as he defaulted to his typical ‘rip off the metaphorical bandaid’ strategy for delivering shocking news. 

It took a few seconds for Alyx to fully process this revelation, and as soon as it sunk in, she found herself at a complete loss as to how to respond. This information answered some of her lingering questions, but of course it also raised new ones, and she still had no idea why, exactly, he’d decided to tell her this in the first place. 

Barney let out a breath and chuckled nervously. “Okay, yeah, probably should’ve expected this,” he said, no doubt in response to whatever emotions were playing across her face. “So, to answer some of your questions,”—he proceeded to tick off responses on his fingers—“wasn’t planned, she only knew for a week or two, she didn’t tell me until a few days before the Incident, and she didn’t tell Gordon at all.”

He laughed again, more naturally this time. “Well, actually, she told him before she told me, but he completely missed it, so I don’t think that counts.”

Despite her racing thoughts, Alyx couldn’t help but grin. Yeah, that sounded like a typical Gordon move.

Barney sighed and hooked his thumbs into his jeans pockets. “Anyway… to be honest, the news was such a shock that I never really processed it, what with everything else goin’ on. Wasn’t until recently that I sat down and… I dunno, actually let myself think about it, if that makes sense.”

She nodded, encouraging him to go on.

“I always wanted to be a dad,” he said softly. “My childhood wasn’t exactly… well, it wasn’t the best, but I guess I felt like I could make up for that somehow by makin’ sure my kids grew up knowin’ they were loved and never havin’ to worry about money or anything like that.” With a sad smile, he added, “Lauren and I… we wanted a big family. We were gonna get out of Black Mesa, buy a house somewhere, have three or four kids…”

For at least the third time that day, Alyx’s heart nearly broke. Barney would’ve been such a good dad, and it was clear from the way he spoke that he was still coming to terms with how close he had come to realizing that dream before everything had gone to hell.

“I was in a dark place when I met up with you and your dad after the Incident. Real dark.” Barney brought a hand to his face and gently brushed the scar on his left cheek. Alyx wondered if he was aware of his own movement, or if this was a subconscious reflex. 

“And lookin’ back,” he continued, “you were pretty much the only reason I stuck around through all that. You’d just lost your mom and almost lost your dad and I loved you so _goddamn_ much that I didn’t want you to _ever_ have to go through that again.”

Barney spoke with fierce conviction, but the look in his eyes was so vulnerable and tender that Alyx had to fight to hold his gaze.

“I know I was just a glorified babysitter—not really family or anythin’—but I’ll always be grateful to your dad for takin’ me under his wing. The last twenty years have been _hell,_ but bein’ your Uncle Barney?” He smiled again and blinked back fresh tears. “That’s the one part I’d do all over again in a heartbeat.”

At that, Alyx threw her arms around Barney once again and buried her face into the crook of his neck. She tried desperately to keep her emotions in check, but it was a losing battle, especially after Barney began to rub slow circles on her upper back.

Once the tears started, they didn’t stop. Barney didn’t cry, somehow, but he also didn’t let go.

“Shhh, it’s okay. You don’t have to say anythin,’ Al,” he whispered. “I just wanted you to know.”

Although Alyx had always been aware, on some level, that she had been extraordinarily lucky to grow up surrounded by so many people who cared about her, she was suddenly very conscious of just how much she'd taken that for granted.

She, her dad, Dr. Kleiner, and Barney had formed a strange but mostly functional family unit that had, against all odds, managed to endure the worst series of crises in human history. Even though she'd have given anything to have her mother back, growing up with three loving caretakers had almost made up for her absence. Almost. 

She’d known Barney for practically her entire life, but this was the first time she'd really had an opportunity to explore how he viewed their relationship. She'd never considered the possibility that their bond had been more reciprocally beneficial than he’d ever let on. That seemed like a pretty major blind spot, but then again, perhaps that was a natural consequence of assessing relationships through the lens of childhood naivety.

Alyx wanted to tell Barney all of this, and more… and maybe she would, eventually. For now, though, all she could manage to say through her tears was, “You _were_ family, Barney. You still are. I’ve always thought so, and so did dad.”

“Thanks, kid.” Barney sniffled and held onto her for a moment longer, before he let his arms drop to his sides. Alyx brought up a hand to dry her face and attempted to compose herself before she, too, withdrew from the embrace.

She sat back down on the ground next to her oldest friend and hugged her knees to her chest. Without saying a word, Barney wrapped an arm around her shoulders and allowed her to settle with her head resting against his shoulder.

Alyx lost track of how much time passed in comfortable silence, spent watching the clouds go by, the trees rustle in the wind, and flocks of birds fly over the valley.

This, too, reminded her of her childhood; she’d spent countless days and nights sandwiched between her dad and Barney, or her dad and Dr. Kleiner, passively taking in the ever-changing scenery around her while the adults enjoyed a brief respite from their efforts to save the world.

“Hey, Al?”

She felt the rumble of Barney’s voice more than she heard it. When she sat up to look at him, she found that he was still staring out across the valley with misty eyes and a faraway smile on his face.

“Next time there’s a clear night and you wanna go look at the stars,” he said, “you know where to find me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for bearing with the 2-3 week breaks between updates, and consider this a heads-up that this is probably going to be the new normal for this fic. Work-related coronavirus panic is really cutting into my free time. Wash your hands, friends!
> 
> Update 4/24/20: I'm not dead and I promise I'm still (sporadically) working on this. Quarantine is hell, y'all. 
> 
> Also, guess who finally took the plunge and made a Tumblr? Follow angels-heap for basically the same content you get from every other Half Life blog, except mine also includes vague ramblings about the quirks of my writing process.


	12. Chapter 12

Gravel crunched under heavy tires and thin branches scraped against glass and metal as Gordon slowed the rusty pickup truck to a stop, shifted into park, and pulled the key out of the ignition.

He took a deep breath and mentally congratulated himself for managing to arrive at their destination without mishap. Off-road driving still wasn’t his forte, but it helped that he’d managed to borrow a vehicle with an automatic transmission this time.

When he turned to glance at Alyx, she flashed a slightly wry smile and a thumbs-up from the passenger seat, suggesting that she was having similar thoughts. Gordon grinned as he exited the truck and made his way around the front of the vehicle. He opened the passenger side door and gallantly held out a hand to help her out of her seat. 

Gordon knew the gesture was old-fashioned and entirely unnecessary, but still, he refused to let chivalry die on his watch. Alyx’s half-hearted protest as she took his hand and hopped down to the ground made it quite clear that she was humoring him by playing along, but he didn’t mind. He planted a soft, lingering kiss on her cheek before letting go of her hand and moving to unload the back of the truck.

Instinctively, the first object Gordon grabbed was the loaded shotgun wedged between the picnic basket and the emergency first aid kit. In spite of Barney’s earlier reassurances that the area was under surveillance and supposedly free of any persisting Combine presence, the previously comfortable silence that surrounded them was starting to put him on edge.

As soon as she caught sight of the firearm, Alyx shot him a quizzical look. “Hey, what kind of date is this, anyway?” she asked.

“A safe one,” Gordon deadpanned as he handed her the shotgun.

Alyx chuckled softly and accepted the weapon without further comment. She double-checked that the safety was engaged and leaned back against the side of the truck, seemingly content to stand back and watch while Gordon continued to take stock of their supplies.

He took another deep breath, this time in an effort to calm the butterflies in his stomach. For once, the feeling stemmed more from excitement than anxiety, but he couldn’t quite tune out the little voice in the back of his mind that insisted this evening had to go _perfectly._

Gordon knew, rationally, that almost all of the pressure he was feeling was self-imposed. However, that awareness wasn’t enough to override his desire to make sure this next milestone in their relationship was memorable for _only_ the right reasons. He also couldn’t help but feel like he had a lot to make up for, after everything they'd been through lately, and he hoped Alyx wouldn't mind that he'd elected to indulge in some nostalgia for pre-Combine times.

With a grunt, Gordon hefted the large, overstuffed picnic basket out of the back of the truck and motioned for Alyx to grab the remaining blanket roll and follow him. She complied wordlessly, her expression brimming with curiosity and excitement, and fell into step behind Gordon as he led her down a long, narrow gravel path to the entrance of a small cabin.

He fished the key out of his jeans pocket with his free hand, unlocked the heavy wooden door, and pushed it open with his shoulder. Inside, the one-room cabin was clean and nearly empty, save for a stack of firewood, a few supply crates, and some miscellaneous construction materials left over from the recent restoration efforts.

Gordon took a few steps forward and set the picnic basket down before rejoining Alyx, who had stopped just inside the doorway with an expression of awe on her face. He wrapped his arms around her from behind and gently rested his head against hers as they both surveyed their surroundings. 

Tall windows on either side of the stone fireplace on the opposite wall overlooked a massive, calm lake surrounded by a backdrop of thick forest and scenic mountain peaks. Although Gordon had never been particularly outdoorsy growing up, he couldn’t help but feel a pang of homesickness for the Pacific Northwest as he took in the view before him.

A blanket of quietude, interrupted only by occasional bird calls and distant animal sounds, underscored the fact that for the first time in months, they were really, truly _alone._

“Wow…” Alyx said softly, “I knew there were cabins up here, but I didn’t expect them to be this _nice.”_

Gordon nodded and kissed the top of her head in lieu of a verbal response.

Another beat or two passed in silence before Alyx extricated herself from Gordon’s embrace, set down the blanket roll and shotgun, and began to slowly circle the room, testing the floorboards as she went.

Upon reaching the opposite corner of the cabin, she turned around and shot Gordon a smirk, which he acknowledged with a good-natured eyeroll. He supposed he couldn’t blame her for being cautious, seeing as he _did_ have quite a reputation for falling through wooden floors.

While Alyx continued her inspection, Gordon unrolled the thick blanket and spread it across the floor in front of the fireplace. Next, he selected a supply crate to serve as a makeshift table and carefully positioned it in the center of the blanket.

“I thought these were only supposed to be used for storage until the renovations were finished.” Alyx stopped in her tracks and turned to face Gordon again. “Have you been throwing around your celebrity for special privileges, Doctor Freeman?” she teased. 

Gordon responded with a shrug and a sideways grin. He had to admit it was a fair question, and she wasn’t technically _wrong,_ but he didn’t think it would hurt to wait and explain that later.

After taking a moment to admire his handiwork, Gordon knelt down on the blanket and busied himself with unpacking the picnic basket. Alyx joined him a couple minutes later, having apparently ascertained that the cabin was not going to collapse beneath them, and casually rested a hand on his thigh.

He knew they needed to eat before the food got cold, but he couldn’t resist the temptation to pull Alyx towards him and properly kiss her for the first time since they’d left the base. She brought a hand around to cup the back of his head and deepened the kiss, and Gordon soon found himself lost in sensation as he ran his hands up and down the back of her soft knit sweater, all thoughts of dinner temporarily abandoned.

Alyx was the first to come up for air. “That was nice,” she murmured against his lips, “but something tells me this wasn’t all you had in mind when you dragged me out here.” She planted a kiss on the tip of his nose and pulled away with a grin. 

Gordon chuckled sheepishly and reluctantly returned his attention to unpacking their dinner. Much to his relief, he found that the main dish was still warm underneath the layer of towels he’d used for insulation.

As he worked, he tried not to let Alyx’s not-so-subtle attempts to peer over his shoulder faze him. “I only need a couple more minutes,” he reassured her, as he shifted to block her view of the basket. He wanted everything to be a surprise, and he also didn’t want her to see that he’d packed a portable boombox. He was still second-guessing that decision. 

“Are you _sure_ there’s nothing I can do to help?” Alyx asked. Her tone was light, but Gordon could sense a hint of frustration behind her words.

He huffed a sigh and relented. “All right… if you _really_ want to help, you can get a fire going.”

It wasn’t terribly chilly yet, but he figured it couldn’t hurt to go ahead and get cozy. He was also quite conscious of the fact that putting Alyx in charge of this particular task would eliminate at least one opportunity for him to potentially embarrass himself later on. 

Alyx looked relieved to have something productive to do, but she didn’t seem to be in any hurry to stand up. Instead, she continued to make a show of trying to look over his shoulder. 

“Your assistance with the fire would be much appreciated,” Gordon reiterated, allowing a faint note of humor to creep into his tone, “but if you so much as _think_ about peeking into this basket, I’m afraid I will have no choice but to…” He trailed off as he found himself at a loss for a suitable threat with which to end that sentence. 

In a flash, Alyx was no longer sitting beside him; instead, she was straddling his lap with her hands on his shoulders, staring him down with an absolutely wicked grin.

“You’ll have no choice but to _what?”_ she prompted, as she slowly trailed a finger along the collar of his flannel shirt and down his chest. 

“Alyx…” he groaned, his patience and composure both wearing thin. Part of him wanted to give in to her teasing, but a much more insistent part of him was fixated on the fact that he’d had a _plan,_ and this distraction would throw off the rest of the night and then maybe she wouldn’t have a good time and he’d just end up stressing her out _more_ and then he wouldn’t have a chance to tell her…

Something about Gordon’s body language seemed to tip Alyx off that he was starting to catastrophize. She moved her wandering hand from his chest and kissed his forehead in an unspoken apology. “Okay, fine, I’ll be good,” she reassured him as she rose to her feet. “We can do this your way.”

Gordon shot her an apologetic but grateful look and set himself to the task of setting the supply crate ‘table.’ It wasn’t exactly a five-star dining setup, but given the minimal resources he had to work with, he was fairly proud of the end result. 

Shortly after the crackling fire began to remove the chill from the room, Alyx curled up beside him again, rested her head on his shoulder, and began to rub small circles on his lower back. It didn’t escape his attention that her gaze was pointedly directed towards the opposite wall.

“Can I look now?” she asked after a minute, and Gordon acquiesced with a soft hum. The anxious fluttering in his stomach all but dissipated when Alyx’s face broke into a delighted grin. 

“You really went all out for this, huh? Wow, you must really like me.”

A bark of laughter rumbled up from Gordon’s chest before he could think to stop it. “Yeah, you’re pretty great,” he responded with the same tone of joking affection. He just barely managed to keep a straight face as he deadpanned, “I hope this isn’t too forward.”

“Oh no, not at all,” Alyx replied, her attempt to mimic his delivery foiled by a slightly undignified snort. “One question, though.” She gestured towards the partially uncovered baking dish. “Uh, what exactly is this?”

Gordon had anticipated that reaction, and he wasn’t deterred. With exaggerated bravado, he announced, “This delicious feast that I have set before you is… Chicago-style deep dish pizza.” 

Alyx glanced at Gordon, then at the contents of the baking dish—which he had to begrudgingly admit looked more like a casserole covered with lumpy tomato soup than any kind of pizza he’d ever encountered—and then back at his face with an expression of confusion and barely-contained amusement. He wondered if she remembered the last time they’d talked about this specific dish, or if she thought he'd completely lost his mind. 

“So, as you may have guessed, I had to take some, uh, liberties with the recipe due to the scarcity of certain ingredients,” Gordon clarified with a sheepish grin, “and I know the visual presentation leaves a little to be desired, but… um, it tastes better than it looks.”

Well, he was pretty sure of that, anyway. He’d only tried a couple of bites. 

Alyx placed a reassuring hand on his arm and smiled. “This isn’t exactly what I remember pizza looking like, but… it smells _amazing,_ Gordon. And hey, you know I’ll try anything once.”

Gordon nodded, picked up their plates, and dished up two servings. When Alyx reached for her fork, he held up a finger and reached into the picnic basket to grab one last surprise.

“You can tell me if the food terrible,” he said. “I can take it, I promise… but either way, I’m hoping _this_ will help it go down a little easier.” With a flourish, he brandished a bottle of wine and two coffee mugs.

The expression of shock and excitement on Alyx’s face more than made up for her lukewarm reaction to the main course. “Woah, where did you manage to find _wine?_ Is it still good?”

“It was a gift from Barney, and good luck getting him to tell you where he got it. He wouldn’t even give me a hint.” Gordon shrugged and squinted at the label, which was faded and appeared to be written in a Slavic language he couldn’t identify and definitely couldn’t read.

“In the interest of transparency,” he confessed, “let me state for the record that I have absolutely no idea what we’re about to drink, but Barney said it’s good stuff, and…” He shrugged. “Well, I trust him.”

Alyx nodded in agreement. Gordon fished his multi-tool out of his pocket, pulled out the corkscrew, and opened the bottle. He had never been much of a wine guy, but the familiarity of the smell emanating from the bottle seemed like a good sign.

He filled two mugs with dark red wine and handed one to Alyx before raising his in the air and clearing his throat for a toast. “To our first official date?”

Alyx clinked her mug against his. “To our first official date,” she echoed.

Gordon took a tentative sip of his drink and found it to be surprisingly palatable. Beyond that, the sweet but bitter taste of the rare treat—which he suspected was being wasted on his uncultured palate—made him feel more civilized that he had in eons.

Meanwhile, Alyx, always the brave one, was the first to take a full bite of her ‘pizza.’ Much to Gordon’s continued relief, she hummed in approval and offered a thumbs-up, which gave him enough confidence to sample the dish from his own plate. 

It was… okay. Trying to pass it off as Chicago-style _anything_ felt practically criminal, but then again, what Alyx didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. Despite being very slightly overcooked and unavoidably under-seasoned, the dish was objectively a step up from their usual diet of long-expired MREs and headcrab stew. Gordon figured that had to count for something. 

They ate in silence for several minutes as Gordon wracked his brain for an appropriate conversation starter. He had never been very good at dating, and it felt strange to approach a dinner date without the lifeline of his usual go-to questions.

He couldn’t exactly ask Alyx where she’d gone to college or if she’d read any interesting scientific papers recently, but he still wanted to keep conversation light without resorting to small talk about their work at White Forest.

The last few weeks had made it abundantly clear that Alyx desperately needed—and very much deserved—a nice, relaxing break from all the responsibilities she’d inherited since her father’s passing, as well as everything else that had been weighing on her mind lately. That was precisely why he’d decided to take her on a date to the middle of nowhere. 

“Hey,” Alyx started suddenly, interrupting Gordon’s train of thought. “What’s with the speakers?”

“Oh, I, um…” Gordon glanced behind him and mentally cursed himself for not putting the boombox back in the picnic basket after he’d had to remove it to access the cutlery. He could feel his face heating up as he explained, “I thought maybe it would be nice to play some music in the background or something, but if you think that’s too cheesy, we don’t… we don’t have to.”

Alyx took a sip of her wine and smiled warmly over the top of her mug before responding, “Actually… I think that’d be really nice. It’s been a while, you know?”

Oh, right. Somehow, he’d managed to forget that music, much like wine, was something of a rare luxury these days. Gordon let out a soft sigh of relief and reached into the basket to locate the tape he’d chosen for the occasion. His hands shook only slightly as he loaded it into the cassette tray.

“Before you tease me about being old-fashioned and sappy,” he warned, his finger hovering over the ‘play’ button, “I want you to know that the pickings were slim, and all the other options were objectively _completely_ inappropriate. I did my best, all right?”

Alyx giggled and Gordon joined in as he recalled the truly _abysmal_ selection of tapes and CDs he’d found in a box of media salvaged from other nearby cities. Given that his other options had consisted mostly of self-recorded Russian metal music, since the other rebels had had their pick of the better finds long before he’d even known to look, he felt confident in his decision to go with a mixtape of mostly 1960s and ‘70s American folk rock labeled “for Heather.”

He didn’t know who Heather was—or rather, had been, as he had every reason to believe that neither she nor the person who had clearly loved her so much were still around—but he liked to think he was honoring them, in a way, by hanging onto this small artifact of their pre-war romance.

Without further ado, Gordon hit ‘play.’ After a couple seconds of crackling static, the opening notes of Jim Croce’s “I’ll Have to Say I Love You in a Song” began to spill out of the speakers, prompting him to lurch for the ‘fast-forward’ button. He’d forgotten that song was on the tape, and starting off on that note felt just a little too on the nose, given his intentions for later in the evening.

Once he’d found the beginning of the second track, Gordon wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans, turned back towards Alyx, and pretended to ignore her quizzical look by taking a long drink from his mug of wine.

A few more beats passed in silence, save for the musical stylings of Crosby, Stills, and Nash, before Gordon felt himself start to relax. The soft, folksy music reminded him of simpler times: Going on long car rides with his family, running mindless errands in college, watching reruns of old sitcoms with Lauren while they waited for Barney to get home from work…

Gordon stole a glance at Alyx out of the corner of his eye and found her staring into the fire with a faraway look in her eyes, swaying gently to the beat without a hint of self-consciousness. He was struck by another wave of love and admiration for the strong, beautiful, _incredible_ woman sitting across from him as he was reminded yet again that he and Alyx had grown up in completely different worlds.

Unlike him, Alyx had so precious few of those kinds of mundane, idyllic memories. And yet, despite that handicap, she’d still managed to become one of the most caring, sensitive, relatively well-adjusted people he’d ever had the pleasure to know… and then, even more inexplicably, she’d chosen to be with _him._

How had he ever gotten so lucky?

That train of thought eventually led Gordon to what should have been an obvious realization: Even though he and Alyx had skipped straight past first date small talk to life-and-death sacrifices and unbreakable vortal bonds, and even though they already knew every inch of one another in a physical sense, and even though they’d spent the last few weeks talking _constantly_ about their pasts…

There was still so much he didn’t know about her. So much he still _wanted_ to know about her. And who knew how long it would be before they had another chance to truly connect like this, with virtually no risk of being interrupted?

Gordon suddenly had a thousand and one questions that he wanted to ask, and his renewed sense of curiosity and urgency was all it took for him to finally settle on a conversation starter. 

Over a second helping of not-quite-pizza and a little more wine, Gordon and Alyx exchanged anecdotes and precious tidbits of information about everything from their favorite Earth animals to their silliest pet peeves to their most unpopular scientific opinions to their happiest childhood memories. 

Inevitably, these small glimpses into one another’s lives invited follow-up questions, and it wasn’t long at all before they moved on to telling stories. For the first time in a while, they allowed themselves to take a break from reminiscing about lost loved ones in favor of swapping tales about their friends and colleagues who were still alive and well.

Gordon was more than a little surprised to learn, for instance, that Dr. Kleiner had never told Alyx about Henri (Poincaré), the stray cat he’d kept in his office at MIT until a janitor had ratted him out. He vaguely remembered other unauthorized pets, of course, but Henri stood out in his mind as the only one of his former advisor’s animal companions that had quite literally eaten his homework.

Sometime later, it was Gordon’s turn to howl with laughter when Alyx revealed that the vortigaunts had actively avoided her for most of her adolescence due to her tendency to bombard them with ‘why?’ questions, often about phenomena that they simply could not explain in a non-native tongue.

“You say “when I was a kid,” as if you’ve actually grown out of that habit,” Gordon teased, grinning as he dodged Alyx’s playful attempts to smack him before they dove into another story, and another, and another…

* * *

Shortly before sunset, Gordon began to wonder if it had been a mistake to top off his mug of wine. He was definitely pleasantly buzzed; his whole body felt warm and he couldn’t help but focus on how _beautiful_ Alyx looked, talking a mile a minute about her latest breakthrough in her workshop while bathed in golden light.

They took advantage of the next natural lull in the conversation to pack up the leftovers in order to create more space to spread out on the blanket. As soon as Gordon pushed their empty makeshift table out of the way, Alyx leaned over and kissed him deeply.

He could still taste the wine on her lips, and he sighed into her mouth as she climbed into his lap and carded her fingers through his hair, knocking his glasses slightly askew.

“I think it’s really sweet that you remembered that date we talked about,” she murmured, shortly after they broke apart.

Gordon smiled, straightened his glasses, and kissed her again before simply responding, “Of course.” He was elated to hear that she’d made the connection, not that he’d ever really doubted that she would. It made all the complicated preparation feel even more worthwhile.

“If your whole savior of humanity-slash-theoretical physicist thing doesn’t work out,” Alyx continued, gesturing vaguely around them, “I think you could build a very respectable career as a… fancy date planning guy.”

Gordon couldn’t help but chuckle at that. He’d wondered if the wine was getting to her too, and now it seemed he had his answer.

Alas, as much as he enjoyed being the sole focus of Alyx’s admiration—inarticulate as it was—he felt that he had to give credit where it was due. “Before I let you talk me into quitting my day job,” he confessed, “I feel obligated to inform you that Barney deserves at least half of the credit for this.”

Alyx looked up at him in surprise, seemingly awaiting more information, and Gordon took advantage of the opportunity switch positions. He placed his hands on her hips and gently slid her off of his lap, turned her around, and guided her to rest between his outstretched legs with her back pressed against his chest and his arms encircling her waist.

He waited until he felt her melt into his embrace before he picked up where he’d left off.

“The idea to have a nice dinner together in some cozy, out-of-the-way location was mine, but I don’t think I would have been able to pull it off without Barney’s help.” He laughed softly under his breath as he continued, “As it turns out, he has absolutely _no shame_ about leveraging my, uh, ‘celebrity’ for special treatment, and he’s got supply connections like you wouldn’t believe.”

Alyx responded with a knowing nod. “I was wondering how you’d managed to get ahold of enough spices to cook something with… you know, _flavor,_ but yeah, it all makes sense now. Barney’s a miracle worker, isn’t he?” After a beat, she giggled and asked, “On a scale of one to ten, how weird was he about the whole thing?”

Gordon’s eyes rolled up towards the ceiling as he reflected on his date planning experience. Barney had been genuinely enthusiastic and incredibly helpful, but the speed at which he’d alternated between offering unfiltered relationship advice and semi-seriously threatening Gordon’s life if he did anything to hurt Alyx had subjected him to quite a bit of conversational whiplash. 

“About a three, maybe,” Gordon finally answered. “He was really happy to help, though. All the brainstorming and planning… it gave him something positive to focus on, I think.” Subconsciously, he pulled Alyx a little bit closer and smiled sadly. “Barney was always great at big romantic gestures. I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear he hasn’t lost his touch.”

The weight of Gordon’s words lingered in the air and the mood in the room palpably shifted. The previously comfortable near-silence suddenly felt colossal and deafening, and there wasn’t enough air to breathe. Gordon closed his eyes and took a couple of slow, measured breaths, silently willing himself not to succumb to an unexpected wave of grief.

“He’s doing… better, isn’t he?” Alyx asked after a long moment, her voice wavering ever-so-slightly as she spoke.

Gordon hummed in affirmation and clasped Alyx’s hands between his own, gently rubbing his thumb across both of hers as he gradually composed himself. 

Reconnecting with Barney—for real, this time—had been surprisingly easy; much to their shared surprise and relief, their age difference and complex trauma hadn’t stopped them from falling back into comfortable old patterns. As promised, Barney was slowly filling him in on the last 20 years of history, and aside from that, they talked about a little bit of everything: The latest White Forest gossip, Alyx, Black Mesa, Barney’s physical therapy, their families, Lauren…

Gordon hoped their talks were as helpful for Barney as they were for him. Every conversation seemed to bring him another step closer to making sense of the strange new world he’d found himself in, and he was finally starting to feel like he was getting his anxiety back under control. 

Without warning, Alyx tensed, and the subtle movement of her body against his chest was enough to bring Gordon back to the present.

“What’s on your mind?” he asked softly.

“It’s just…” Alyx sighed and began to fidget with her hands. “I’m sorry, I know this isn’t exactly a date-appropriate conversation topic, but I have to ask…” She took a deep breath. “Did he tell you everything? About what happened, I mean?”

Gordon hesitated, unsure how to respond. By unspoken agreement with each other and with Barney, they’d never discussed the details of Barney’s trauma; Gordon had never volunteered that information, and up until now, Alyx had never requested it. 

Seeming to sense his thought process, Alyx quickly clarified, “I’m not asking for details. I just want to know if he ever told you the whole story.” She paused to collect her thoughts and then continued, “It really scares me to think that he’s still carrying around all that baggage by himself, and… I don’t know, I guess I’d feel better if I knew he’d at least talked about it with someone. Does that make sense?”

Gordon nodded and let go of the tension he’d been holding in his shoulders, as he confessed, “He told me everything.” He felt Alyx relax as well, but the way she was still lacing and unlacing her fingers told him that she had other unanswered questions. 

He could guess at least one of them, and he knew she’d never ask it out loud.

Gordon placed his hands over hers once again to still them, before quietly confirming, “It wasn’t his fault. There was nothing he could have done.”

Alyx’s deep sigh of relief in response to his revelation only served to underscore the cruel, twisted irony of his position. It was funny, almost, that Barney had gone to such extreme lengths to keep the details of Lauren’s death a secret, only for Gordon to end up being the only person left alive who could even _begin_ to understand what had actually happened to her. 

He fought to suppress a shudder as he unwittingly recalled the abject _terror_ he’d felt when his mysterious employer had appeared at the foot of Barney’s hospital bed, mere seconds after Barney had inadvertently revealed that Lauren had known of his existence.

The man in the blue suit hadn’t said a word; he’d simply stared at them for what felt like several eternities, one corner of his mouth twisted into an unreadable smirk, and then he’d disappeared through an interdimensional doorway as quickly as he’d arrived.

Gordon knew, implicitly, that the man’s visit had been a warning not to tell Barney what he now knew, even though the truth—bizarre as it was—had the power to liberate his old friend from a lifetime of guilt. Yet again, Gordon had found himself trapped between a rock and hard place, but in his mind, the only logical choice was to take this secret to the grave. 

After all, guilt wasn’t terminal—at least, not in and of itself.

Knowing about the man in the suit, however…

Instinctively, Gordon protectively curled his body around Alyx’s, pulling her flush against his chest and tucking their clasped hands closer to her body. He still didn’t know if she knew the government man, but he was all too aware that the man knew _her._

Just as he’d known Eli… and Lauren, apparently.

Gordon squeezed his eyes shut and fought to steady his breathing. He no longer felt mildly, pleasantly tipsy; he felt dizzy, and perhaps a little bit sick. 

“Does the word ‘zen’ mean anything to you?” Lauren had once asked him, completely out of the blue.

“Nope,” Gordon had replied, with a wry, self-deprecating chuckle. “I’ve never relaxed a day in my life.” And that had been the end of it.

 _Xen._ She’d meant Xen. He was virtually certain of that, and knowing what he knew now, he could think of half a dozen other signs he had missed. Somehow, Lauren had stumbled across top-secret information about things that neither he nor Barney had even dreamed of prior to May 16, 2003… and she’d paid the ultimate price.

Or… had she? For weeks after the encounter in the infirmary, Gordon had been plagued by nightmares—or at least, he had told Alyx they were nightmares—during which he’d been transported to that liminal space between consciousness and unconsciousness where the man in the suit could bend time, space, and reality to his will.

Every time he’d awakened in a cold sweat, disoriented and temporarily paralyzed, he’d had the same image burned into the back of his mind: Lauren, eyes wide with an expression of pure defiance, surprisingly _alone_ in a stuffy yellow bedroom that he didn’t recognize, with one trembling hand clutching a phone and the other splayed protectively across her stomach. 

Gordon could never seem to remember any of the other images the man had shown him, but it felt… _significant_ that he’d never allowed that final scene to play out to its expected conclusion. He was also all too aware that some key details didn’t match Barney’s version of the story, and he had absolutely no idea what to make of that.

Was the man simply taunting him with these visions—teasing the possibility of closure without any intention of delivering on that promise—or were the discrepancies a sign of something more sinister?

Was it possible that Lauren was not truly _gone,_ but rather… in a void, somewhere, just as he had been? Frozen in time, and doomed to return to a ruined Earth when her loved ones were in their sixties or eighties or…

“Gordon?” Alyx asked softly, her concerned voice thankfully derailing his train of thought. “Hey, what’s wrong? You’re shaking.”

Oh, so he was. Slowly, Gordon loosened his white-knuckle grip on her hands and let out a shuddering breath. “I’m okay,” he whispered.

Unsurprisingly, Alyx didn’t seem entirely convinced. “Are you sure? You were really freaking out there for a second.” She craned her head to meet his gaze, her brows creased with worry.

“I… might have been spiraling a little bit,” Gordon conceded, deliberately keeping his explanation vague, “but I’m fine now. Thanks for snapping me out of it.” He straightened his back and smiled, hoping to put her at ease. 

Some things were objectively _not_ fine, of course, but for the moment, he supposed all that really mattered was that they were safe.

As safe as they were ever going to be, anyway.

Alyx’s expression softened and her gaze dropped down to her lap. “I’m sorry for bringing up the situation with Barney,” she said quietly. “I don’t blame you for not wanting to think about that right now, but… well, thanks.” She let out a rueful sigh and squeezed his hand. 

“Actually, I'm kind of glad you brought it up,” Gordon replied, after a long pause, “because I owe _you_ an apology.”

He suspected Alyx knew there was more to his most recent crisis than he'd let on, and although he had absolutely no intention of putting her at risk by offering a full explanation, he felt he owed it to her to at least verbally acknowledge everything he’d put her through. 

“I’m sorry I’ve been… difficult to be around lately, after everything,” he started, choosing his words carefully. “I know I’ve slipped back into some bad habits, and… I want you to know how much I appreciate everything you—”

“Hey, shhh, it’s okay,” Alyx interjected. She tilted her head to give him a peck on the cheek. “I thought we’d settled this like, a couple weeks ago. We _all_ have nightmares, and I know you can’t help being anxious sometimes.” With a gentle laugh, she reassured him, “You have nothing to feel sorry for, okay? I lo–I like all of you. Even the parts that sometimes make me worry.”

“Thanks,” Gordon whispered, as he wrapped both arms around her midsection again and squeezed her tightly, in a sort of backwards hug that didn’t even _begin_ to communicate the true depth of his feelings. “I feel the same way about you,” he murmured, “but I’m going to keep trying to work through some things on my own… or with Barney, maybe. You’ve been going through a lot too, and I… I want to be a better partner to you.”

Once again, he swallowed an _I love you._ It wasn’t the right time. Not yet.

“I know, and thank you,” Alyx replied. She squeezed his hand again and sent a wave of warmth flooding through his body when she added, “I’m proud of you, Gordon.”

He squeezed back, not quite trusting himself to speak. 

Alyx held still for a beat to let her words sink in before she wiggled her way out of Gordon’s vice-like embrace and gestured towards the windows.

“Look, the sun’s setting.”

Indeed, it was. For the next few minutes, Gordon managed to tune out his inner monologue and focus on just _being_ with Alyx while they watched the small bank of clouds above the mountains light up a vibrant cotton candy pink. The color reflected off the smooth water of the lake as the sky continued to fade through several shades of orange and finally to a dim yellow glow.

Gordon was the first to speak again, shortly after the sun dropped behind a distant mountain peak. “Well, this isn’t exactly a Four Seasons overlooking Lake Michigan,” he admitted, “but I did my best. Sorry I couldn’t take you to a museum.”

Alyx laughed softly and replied, “That’s okay. I have to admit I’m just a _little_ disappointed I didn’t get to see any colorful cow statues, though.”

Gordon pressed a lingering kiss to the top of her head. “Someday, maybe.”

“Yeah… someday.”

They lapsed into silence once again, simply enjoying the comfort of each other’s company, until the glowing fire was the only source of light in the cabin. With a start, Gordon registered that the tape had finished playing—quite a while ago, most likely—and reached out to open the cassette tray and flip it over.

He pressed ‘play’ and smiled as he recognized the opening notes of Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon.” The song had been one of his parents’ favorites; it held nothing but good memories for him, and he couldn’t resist the urge to hum along when the vocal track kicked in.

“Would you like to dance?” he asked suddenly. The question escaped his lips before his brain had a chance to weigh in, confirming that he had, indeed, had just a little too much to drink.

Alyx turned to look at him, surprise and a hint of amusement evident across her features, but she didn’t seem put off by his request.

That was all the encouragement Gordon needed to commit to this snap decision. Without waiting for a response, he disentangled their limbs, carefully rose to his feet, and offered her his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still alive! Quarantine blues are kicking my butt, so thanks for being patient with me. I can't make any promises as to when this will be finished, other than that I'm pretty sure it'll be a shorter wait than for Half Life 3, but I'm trying, y'all. 
> 
> By the way, few chapter notes ago, I mentioned something about some half-baked prequel/sequel ideas. To follow up on that: For better or worse, the inspiration to flesh out those ideas has completely deserted me due to the stress of recent events, but I figured I'd elaborate on the relevant plot points as originally outlined... just in case. Consider this an early warning that some ambiguity will intentionally not be resolved.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again, normal people in the Half Life fandom! After many frustrating weekends of sporadic work and overly optimistic tumblr posts (just pretend you didn't see those), chapter 13 is finally here! Just like every other chapter of this thing, it ended up being way longer than I'd originally planned, but hopefully that's a good thing? 
> 
> Sorry about the 5 month wait and thank you so much for all your patience and encouragement while I've been dealing with other things. It's been a hell of a year and it's not over yet.

It only took one glance at Gordon’s slightly nervous, adorably earnest expression for Alyx to accept his invitation. “I don’t think you can really dance to this,” she joked, chuckling softly as she took hold of Gordon’s outstretched hand and rose to her feet.

“I can’t dance to anything,” Gordon deadpanned, a split second before his face broke into a goofy grin. His excitement was infectious as he guided her towards the open expanse of floor beyond the edges of their picnic blanket.

Without letting go of her hand, he wrapped his other arm around her waist and began to sway gently to the beat of the music. Or at least, Alyx assumed that was what he was going for.

She opened her mouth to crack a joke about his lack of rhythm… and then closed it again. This was a side of Gordon she hadn’t seen before, and the last thing she wanted was to make him feel self-conscious.

All while doing her best to follow Gordon’s clumsy movements—in his defense, she reasoned, he was quite clearly at least a little bit drunk—she placed her free hand on his shoulder and tilted her head up to return his beaming smile with one of her own.

When their eyes met, she couldn’t help but appreciate how incredibly handsome he looked in the warm, flickering light. His expression was soft as his gaze swept across her face, his cheeks were still slightly flushed, and for the first time in weeks, she couldn’t detect a single hint of tension in his posture. Looking at him now, it was difficult to believe that he was the same stoic, battle-weary man she’d fought alongside all those months ago.

His full beard was arguably the most noticeable change in his appearance, as of late. Alyx certainly didn’t have any complaints about that, despite Barney’s insistence that it made Gordon look like a walking Seattle stereotype, especially in combination with his growing preference for flannel shirts.

Beyond that, though, the transformation was far more than just physical.

Alyx could count on one hand the number of times Gordon had truly let his guard down for more than a few minutes at a time since she’d known him. Here, in their little slice of paradise in the middle of nowhere, he looked untroubled, relaxed… at peace. He looked _happy._

“What’s that look about?” Gordon asked. The corner of his mouth quirked up into a lopsided grin. “Or do I have something on my face?”

In lieu of a verbal response, lest she scare him back into his shell, Alyx simply leaned forward and kissed his cheek. She had to stifle a giggle when the unexpected movement caused Gordon to stumble over his own feet. 

He tightened his grip on her waist to steady himself, and his shoulders slumped in mock disappointment as he completely gave up on trying to find the beat and let Alyx take the lead. Emboldened, she extricated herself from his embrace and took hold of both of his hands in preparation to introduce some new moves.

Although she hadn’t had many chances to dance growing up, she’d seen enough dancing in pictures and old movies and the older rebels’ post-victory celebrations that she figured she could improvise. With a grin, she took a step back to pick up some momentum and pulled Gordon into a spin.

Much to Alyx’s relief and delight, she discovered that what Gordon lacked in rhythm, he more than made up for in enthusiasm. Granted, she was pretty sure this wasn’t how people were meant to dance to this kind of music, but that didn’t stop them from getting lost in the moment, goofing around and laughing in each other’s arms as if they were the only two people in the world. 

After a couple more songs, the tape switched to something too slow to do anything but sway to—something about a woman named Suzanne—and Alyx decided to take advantage of the lull to catch her breath.

Fortunately, Gordon seemed to more than content to follow suit. He stopped in the middle of the floor, wrapped both arms around her, and leaned down to kiss her. Alyx was more than happy to oblige his request, especially after Gordon slid his hands from her waist down to her hips and pulled her body flush against his own. He still tasted faintly like wine.

“That was fun,” she murmured when they broke apart. A burst of laughter bubbled up from her chest as she rested her head against his shoulder. “I think we’re terrible dancers.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Gordon replied with an answering chuckle.

He pressed another kiss to her forehead and then feel silent, apparently disinclined to elaborate. Alyx wondered if he could feel the electricity where their bodies were pressed against one another, especially when he began to lightly skim his fingers up and down her back, leaving trails of sparks with each movement.

She relaxed into his touch and smiled as she mentally replayed the series of events that had led them to this point. She’d always known Gordon to be a bit sentimental, but their date had given her a whole new appreciation for just how much his old life still meant to him and how desperate he was to share that with her… and just how badly she needed to process this enormous, fresh loss right alongside him. 

Unlike her father, who had had an undoubtedly well-meaning but occasionally frustrating tendency to avoid over-indulging in pre-Incident nostalgia, or Barney, who had answered all of her questions except for the ones that mattered the most, Gordon was an open book when it came to the past.

Whether he realized it or not, he was the piece she’d been missing for almost her entire life—a link to a time Before that served as a constant reminder of exactly what had been lost and what the Resistance had sacrificed so much to restore. Even though Gordon sometimes held her like he thought she would break, and even though she suspected he would always have his secrets, he never acted like she couldn’t handle the past in all its imperfect glory.

And she loved him for that.

The sound of Gordon clearing his throat sharply interrupted her thoughts. When she tilted her head up to meet his gaze, his tender, curious expression nearly took her breath away. She tightened her grip on his waist and closed her eyes, just for a second, and let a wave of serenity wash over her.

A moment later, the background music changed again, this time to something a little livelier. Alyx reluctantly took a step back to gauge what Gordon wanted to do and found him staring off into space with an unreadable look on his face.

Before she had a chance to ask what he was thinking about, he turned to look at her and remarked, “You know, Lauren used to dance.”

Alyx blinked a couple of times as Gordon’s words slowly registered. “Really?” she asked. She was finally starting to wrap her mind around the idea that Lauren had actually existed, and every new tidbit of information served to underscore just how little she still knew about her.

“Mhmm. She said was really into it as a kid, actually, but she took a break when her parents started pushing her to make a career of it. It became more of a hobby after that.” He shrugged. “Obviously, I’m not an expert, but I think she was pretty good.”

Gordon paused to take a breath and adjusted his glasses before continuing, “She really loved the music, too. Mostly big band, swing, jazz… Barney used to tease her about liking ‘old people music,’ but I think it grew on him over time.” He sighed and then murmured, “I never really minded it, either.”

Alyx tried—and failed—not to let her surprise show on her face. What little she knew about Barney’s taste in music did _not_ paint him as a person who would voluntarily listen to old-timey dancing songs. She narrowed her eyes and fixed Gordon with a pointed stare. “Are you _sure_ you’re not making that up?” 

Gordon grinned and help up a distinctly Barney-like three finger salute. “I promise, I’m not messing with you,” he reassured her. “Dr. Kleiner could probably confirm, if you don’t believe me. Barney and Lauren were kind of an… odd couple, at least on the surface, but they… they made sense, I guess, to anyone who saw them together.”

He shrugged, almost apologetically, and then a flicker of amusement crossed his features. “I’m still surprised Barney told you the real story of how they met,” he said. “He used to describe the bar scene from _Airplane!_ whenever someone asked, just to see how far he could get before they caught on.”

“The _what?”_

In response to Alyx’s quizzical look, Gordon burst out laughing and continued, “It’s a real shame you’ve never seen that movie. Since you don’t know where Barney’s stealing all his jokes from, I fear you might have come to the _deeply_ misguided conclusion that he’s actually funny.”

At that, it was Alyx’s turn to crack up. Out of respect for Barney, she decided not to dignify Gordon’s joke with a response; instead, she closed the gap between them again and held onto him for support until she managed to catch her breath.

“She tried to teach me how to dance,” Gordon said, after a moment, prompting a fresh wave of giggles from Alyx. _“Once.”_

“And how did that go?”

Instead of answering, Gordon simply smiled and tried to spin her again. In the process, the toe of his boot caught on the edge of an uneven floorboard, nearly sending them both tumbling over. There was an awkward pause, and then with a sheepish grin, Gordon confessed, “We broke a lamp.”

“Shocker,” Alyx deadpanned.

Gordon’s fake pout turned out to be no match for Alyx’s amused stare. “In my defense,” he said, as he pulled her back towards him and kissed the tip of her nose, “Lauren was almost a foot shorter than I am. I feel like that had to play a role.”

“You’re a physicist, right? Shouldn’t you have seen that coming?”

Gordon shrugged. “Theoretically, yes.”

A perfectly timed _‘click’_ in the background signaled that they’d reached the end of the tape. Alyx’s witty retort died on the tip of her tongue when the mood palpably shifted. She could let Gordon have the last word, she supposed. Just this once.

The sudden silence, save for the croaking of frogs and the whistling of the wind through the trees and the crackling of the fire, served as a bittersweet reminder that it was getting late. The time seemed right for a change of pace. 

“Let’s get you off your feet before either of us gets hurt, okay?” Alyx teased, as she made her way back to the picnic blanket and gestured for Gordon to join her.

His feigned offense at her teasing remark was short-lived and he put up no resistance when she took hold of his hand and pull him down beside her on the blanket. It was soft and thick enough for her to comfortably lie down on her side, facing the fire. Gordon was quick to follow suit behind her. 

As he settled in, Gordon slung an arm across Alyx’s waist, fumbled for her hand, and intertwined their fingers before giving it a gentle squeeze. She smiled and squeezed back. Throughout their silent exchange, she could feel Gordon’s heartbeat pounding against her back; it was clear that he, too, had picked up on the new, not-unpleasant tension in the air. 

Aside from that, though, Gordon appeared uncharacteristically… _calm._ His breaths came slow and steady, despite his rapid heartbeat, and his arm that was draped across her torso was completely slack.

For the first time in a while, Alyx truly believed he was going to be okay. _They_ were going to be okay.

It was time, she decided.

Carefully, so as not to dislodge Gordon’s arm, Alyx rolled over to face him. He took a breath in, as if he was about to say something, and then stopped when she brought her hand up to cup his face. Almost immediately, his posture relaxed. Without saying a word, he blinked slowly and let out a soft sigh of contentment. 

“Gordon?” she murmured, once she’d gotten comfortable. Their eyes met as she brushed her thumb across his cheek and whispered, “I love you.” The words slipped out naturally, like she’d been saying them forever.

She felt Gordon’s breathing catch, just for a second, before his face lit up and his gaze locked on hers. “I love you too,” he whispered back, as he began to trace his fingertips along the curve of her waist, almost reverently.

They sat frozen for a couple of long seconds, exchanging matching grins, before Gordon abruptly broke their eye contact and began to slowly shake his head. Alyx moved her free hand from his face to his shoulder and waited, slightly bemused, for an explanation. 

“I, uh…” Gordon’s shoulders began to tremble with near-silent laughter. “You beat me to it,” he finally managed. “I’ve been meaning to say it for a while, but…” He cleared his throat and glanced up with a sheepish expression, “The time never felt right until tonight, and I had a whole thing prepared, but this, um… I think this was better, actually.”

Having found herself at a loss for a suitably poignant verbal response, Alyx simply did what felt natural—she kissed him. She felt him smile against her lips as she carded her fingers through his hair until they broke apart, at which point they resumed staring at each other in silent awe.

Alyx’s curiosity continued to simmer, just below the surface, until she simply couldn’t contain it any longer. “You were going to give a speech?” she asked, her tone laced with both affection and amusement.

“It was… very sappy,” Gordon confessed, after a beat, “and it was more of an outline than anything, so my delivery probably would not have been terribly impressive, but I guess I just… felt like I should explain myself?”

He chuckled sheepishly as he appeared to realize just how badly he’d overthought the whole situation, but Alyx was intrigued. 

“I’d love to hear it,” she prompted. “If you still want to share, anyway.”

Gordon froze and dropped his gaze again before he acquiesced with a sigh and a characteristically shy half-smile. He took a deep breath and let his eyes roll upward as he collected his thoughts.

“I don’t know how I would have survived—literally—if I hadn’t met you when I showed up in City 17,” he started, after a long pause. His entire body tensed as a visible shiver ran down his spine, prompting Alyx to rub his shoulder reassuringly as he continued, “When I think about all the… variables and circumstances that had to align for us to cross paths, I… it scares me, actually. How close I came to… not knowing you.”

Alyx nodded, encouraging him to go on, even as her own thoughts started to wander. Gordon’s comment about the improbability of their situation reminded her of her own escape from Black Mesa—the first in a very long sequence of complex, inexplicable occurrences that had ultimately led them to this point—and before she knew it, that thought had completely consumed her.

Naturally, her memories of the Incident were fairly fragmented, but she could still recall some events almost visceral clarity:

A kind stranger in a dark blue suit who had scooped her into his arms with pale, ice cold hands to shield her from the bolts of green electricity that had danced across the walls…

… the sheer relief that had washed across her father’s face the moment he first caught sight of her at from the opposite end of a long, cold steel corridor, mere moments before their daring escape…

… the coldness and fear she’d seen in her father’s eyes several hours later, when he’d made her promise to never, _ever_ ask about the man in the suit again.

That was perhaps the only boundary she’d never pushed during her tumultuous adolescence, but her complacent silence on the matter didn’t mean she’d forgotten about the man who had rescued her. He appeared in her dreams, sometimes, but she could never remember a word he’d said once she escaped the fog of sleep.

A morbidly curious, rebellious part of her occasionally contemplated asking Gordon if he remembered the man from Black Mesa, but all it ever took was one flashbulb memory of her father’s haunted, anguished expression for the question to die on her lips. 

Some mysteries, nagged the little voice in the back of her mind, might be better left unsolved. 

Alyx’s face flushed with chagrin as she snapped out of her trance and realized she’d completely zoned out in the middle of Gordon’s profession of love.

This kind of thing tended to happen when the man in the suit was concerned. Her memories of the Incident were so vivid and overwhelming that it was nearly impossible to focus on anything else while she recalled them. Not to mention, her alcohol buzz hadn’t quite worn off yet. 

But still, that was no excuse for getting distracted in the middle of such an important moment.

Much to Alyx’s relief, Gordon didn’t appear to have noticed her lapse in attention. She could thank the wine for that, she supposed. She vowed silently to make this up to him later as she fought to return her attention to the present moment.

“… _way_ out of my league,” Gordon confessed with a low chuckle. “I shouldn’t be the ‘One Free Man’”—he practically spat the words—“or anything like that. I’m a wreck most of the time. An extremely average wreck, at that. You know better than anyone that I was always one poorly-timed panic attack away from dooming the entire planet.”

Alyx tensed and took a deep breath in preparation to interject, but before she could find the words, Gordon continued, “And I know you know that, and you’re… you’re _incredible,_ and yet you still… love me.” He spoke slowly and carefully, as if he was still trying out the words. His self-deprecating scowl gave way to a warm, genuine smile as their meaning slowly sunk in.

“I do. And I think you’re selling yourself a little short here, but we can circle back to that after you finish showering me with compliments,” Alyx replied, only half-jokingly.

At that, Gordon laughed—a warm, genuine belly laugh that told her he was going to be just fine, even if she spared him the lecture this time around. He lifted his head slightly to give her room to rest hers against his chest. She accepted the invitation without hesitation. 

“This isn’t how I pictured my life going,” Gordon mused aloud as she tucked her head under his chin and kissed his chest through his checkered flannel shirt. “Not even in my wildest dreams or nightmares. I can’t say I’d want to do it all again, but… I’m glad we’re here.” He paused and hugged her even closer. “And I’m excited to have a future… with you. To see what that holds for us and do our part to rebuild society…”

Gordon trailed off with a wistful sigh, and Alyx swallowed hard as a knot of anxiety began to form in her stomach.

Even though she was pretty sure Gordon hadn’t been referring to anything in particular with his last comment, his use of the phrase “do our part” unwittingly reminded her of one of the last conversations she’d ever had with her father.

At the time, his not-so-subtle ribbing had been more than a little mortifying, but that feeling had long since faded. Looking back on it now brought up a very different emotion: _guilt._ On some level, she knew it was irrational, but that wasn’t enough to save her from buckling under the weight of unmet expectations.

“Alyx?” Gordon spoke softly, but the slight tremor in his voice failed to belie his apprehension about the sudden change in her body language. “What’s wrong?”

She drew in a sharp breath and buried her face in his chest, unable to form the words to answer him while her guilt transformed into an intense wave of grief. She found that squeezing her eyes shut did nothing to banish the memory of her father cupping her face in both hands, kissing her forehead, wishing them well… clearly on edge but blissfully ignorant as to what was to come… 

_“I just wish all this didn’t have to fall on you, Alyx,”_ his voice echoed in her head, distorted but still recognizable. _“Your mother would be so proud…”_

“Shhh, it’s okay,” Gordon soothed, when he felt her shoulders start to tremble. With his free hand, he began to rub slow circles on her back, pausing only long enough to reach for the edge of the blanket and pull it over her like a shield.

The extra weight and warmth were comforting, and it wasn’t long before her ever-present heartache began to recede into the background of her consciousness. She let a couple of tears escape and soak into the fabric of Gordon’s shirt before she loosened her grip on his waist and shrugged off the blanket.

“Thinking about your dad?”

Alyx nodded and sniffled a couple of times before she managed to reply, “I know we’ve already talked about this and it’s pretty minor in the grand scheme of things, but… I still feel so weirdly… _guilty,_ I guess, when I remember how much he wanted grandchildren.” She sighed. “Obviously, it was all hypothetical until we took out the suppression field, but he always talked about how he wanted that for me, and now…”

She trailed off, unsure as to how to continue without venturing too far into uncharted conversational territory. A second too late, she wondered if she’d already said too much.

Gordon’s hand that had been rubbing her back suddenly stilled and then disappeared. With some effort, he managed to wedge his arm between them a few seconds later. “Look at me,” he murmured as he placed a finger under her chin.

He didn’t have to follow through with the action. Seeing as he’d borrowed this tactic from her own playbook, his gentle command was enough to get her attention. She lifted her head and offered a tiny nod, granting him permission to say his piece.

“Like any loving father who had to raise a kid through the fall of civilization”—Alyx couldn’t help but crack a wry smile at that—“I’m sure your dad’s biggest wish was that someday, you would be able to experience all the best parts of life that the generations before you took for granted. Having kids was just one tiny part of that.”

Gordon paused for effect and placed his hand on top of hers where it rested against his chest. “More than anything,” he said, kindly but firmly, “your dad wanted you to be safe and happy. That’s what really matters. The rest is optional.”

“I know, I know,” she mumbled. “It’s not just that, though. It’s everything else too. I always knew I’d inherit Dad’s role in the Resistance at some point, but everything happened so suddenly and… I wasn’t prepared. And every time someone gets hurt or wastes resources because of a poor decision I made, I feel like I’m letting everyone down. Including Dad.”

She sighed again. _“Especially_ Dad.”

It felt both liberating and humiliating to finally say it out loud.

Gordon nodded solemnly. “I know I wasn’t around to witness the early days of the Resistance firsthand,” he started, speaking slowly as he chose his words carefully, “but… I think it’s safe to assume your dad struggled too, at first. And even once he knew what he was doing, I doubt it ever got any easier. The learning curve for something like that… it’s got to be _massive.”_

At that, Alyx let out a breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding. Not only was Gordon telling her exactly what she needed to hear, but whether he realized it or not, he was parroting some of her own words back at her.

Damn. Despite his reputation to the contrary, Gordon could be awfully perceptive when it really mattered.

“Your dad was one of the kindest, most hardworking people I’ve ever met,” Gordon continued, after a moment of heavy silence, “but even still, it’s hard to imagine what it was like for him to transition from his cushy private sector research position to… all of this. In the aftermath of a war, no less.”

Gordon’s features briefly lit up with an expression Alyx couldn’t quite place, and then he added, “Especially seeing as he had to overcome a _significant_ handicap.”

In an instant, Alyx went from nodding along to furrowing her brow and blinking up at Gordon in a display of utter confusion. His light, almost joking tone suggested that he hadn’t intended for her to take that last statement at face value, but she had a feeling she was missing something.

After a beat, Gordon rushed to clarify, “Oh, no… No, I wasn’t talking about his leg.” He had the decency to look contrite for a split second before his countenance transformed into a full-blown smirk. “I was referring to the fact that he went to _Harvard.”_

As it turned out, Gordon’s irreverent quip—touchingly reminiscent of her father’s playfully contemptuous rivalry with Dr. Kleiner—was exactly what they’d needed to dispel the tension in the room. After a beat of silence, Alyx was the first to dissolve into a fit of laughter, and Gordon wasn’t far behind.

“You’re doing the best you can,” he reassured her, as soon as he caught his breath. “That’s all anyone can reasonably ask of you. I’m proud of you, and I’m sure he would be too. I can’t see why he’d blame you for things that are… outside of your control.”

Alyx suspected that Gordon wasn’t referring to her leadership capabilities anymore.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” she mumbled, as her thoughts wandered back to the last time she and Gordon had talked about the possibility of having children—more for practical reasons than any sort of long-term future planning, at least at the time.

Their ultimate decision to leave things up to chance had almost certainly been influenced by a shared, unspoken assumption that the whole point of the discussion was most likely moot. After all, they’d both waded through more than their fair share of toxic sludge, and even a fully charged HEV suit could only offer so much protection from direct exposure to an unstable reactor core.

Or a resonance cascade, for that matter.

“So, we’re still in agreement?” Gordon asked, breaking the silence. “Whatever happens, happens?”

Alyx nodded. Once that nagging, irrational guilt was removed from the equation, she’d long since embraced a certain ambivalence about the whole situation. Any possible outcome had its pros and cons, and it was difficult to mourn the potential loss of an option she’d grown up never expecting to have in the first place. 

It surprised her, though, that Gordon seemed so unfazed by the possibility that, should a miracle happen, their lives would change practically overnight with no warning and no contingency plan in place. If she’d learned one thing about Gordon in the time that she’d known him as an adult, it was that he _despised_ ambiguity.

For the second time that night, her curiosity eventually got the better of her. “Are you sure it doesn’t bother you?” she asked. “The uncertainty, I mean.” When Gordon didn’t answer, she took a sharp breath in and decided to confront the truth head on. “Or the possibility that we… can’t?”

In response, Gordon let out a long, deep sigh and acknowledged her question with one of his own. “Do you ever get the feeling that… that someone else is calling the shots in your life?”

Once again, something about his words conjured up a mental image of the man from Black Mesa. This time, however, Alyx forced herself to ignore it, even though the effort required to do so made her head physically ache. She had no idea where Gordon was going with this—perhaps he was referring to religion?—but now that she’d given voice to their unspoken fears, she knew she owed it to him to hear him out.

Slowly, Gordon rolled over onto his back, slipped off his glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose, and stared straight up at the ceiling for a long moment before he picked up where he’d left off.

“That thought used to absolutely terrify me. I always… I grew up needing to be in control, all the time. I had my whole life mapped out—at least through grad school—and I always knew what was coming next. Or at least…. I thought I did.”

He took a deep breath, replaced his glasses, and turned his head to look her in the eye. “But after everything that’s happened, I think I’m sort of… I’ve finally made peace with the fact that free will is an illusion and some things just… can’t be controlled.” His tone was almost eerily matter of fact. “Nothing that has happened to me over the last few months—er, years—was part of my life plan, and a lot of it wasn’t great, but somehow… I still ended up here. With you.”

Alyx nodded. She was starting to see where Gordon was going with this. He’d been frozen in time for two decades and then he’d come back with the weight of the world on his shoulders. Of course he’d had to give up some control.

She scooted a little closer in order to rest her head on his shoulder while she mentally grappled with a renewed awareness of just how hard that must have been for him, especially with his anxiety.

He’d _definitely_ been selling himself short earlier, to say the least.

Gordon kissed her forehead and reached for her hand. “I guess what I’m trying to say is… if it’s meant to happen—having kids, I mean—then it will. And if it’s not, and it doesn’t… that’s okay too.”

He squeezed her hand; she squeezed back. “I’ll still be fulfilled. You’re enough for me, and we already have a family. We _are_ a family.” Alyx glanced at his face just in time to watch his expression melt into a soft, earnest smile. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” she whispered. “And thank you. For everything.”

“Of course.” Gordon shifted slightly in order to free his closest arm so he could use it to support her back. With his other hand, he carefully slipped off her headband and began to run his fingers through her hair.

“Anyway,” he said, “if it turns out that kids aren’t in the cards for us, uh, biologically, we could always… adopt? Maybe?”

Alyx grinned. “Or we could get a dog?”

“Yeah, sure, that would be— _wait.”_ Gordon narrowed his eyes and fixed her with his best no-nonsense stare. “What kind of dog? Don’t get me wrong, I love Dog, but one giant robot companion is enough, I think.”

“Hmmmm…” She made a show of pretending to deliberate before continuing, in the most serious tone she could muster, “I mean, terrestrial dogs are pretty great, but Dr. Kleiner’s plan to domesticate houndeyes sure is showing a lot of promise, don’t you think?”

Much to her disappointment, Gordon elected not to respond right away. She continued to maintain her straight face in hopes that he’d eventually take the bait, but she was no match for him in this particular battle of wits. One glance at his entirely unamused expression was all it took for her lose her composure. 

“Fine,” she conceded when her giggling fit subsided. She made a point of dragging out the word to emphasize her faux disappointment. “We can get a normal, _boring_ dog.”

“That sounds nice,” Gordon answered, with total sincerity. “Just you, me, our giant canine-like robot, and our normal, boring dog, in a little cabin somewhere where we can go to... get away from everything, at the end of the day.” Alyx didn’t even have to look at him to know that he was smiling. 

She echoed his contented sigh and snuggled further into the crook of his neck. This was the first time they’d ever talked about the future in such concrete terms, and it was both a joy and a relief to hear that Gordon also fantasized about moving away from White Forest.

As much as she loved living so close to all of the most important people in her life, White Forest was rapidly approaching capacity, and there would soon come a point where communal living was no longer explicitly necessary for safety. By then, perhaps, they’d be able to move into one of the lakeside cabins, or any number of other outbuildings in the general vicinity of the base.

In the meantime, they could dream. And perhaps they wouldn’t have to give up their newfound privacy just yet.

“Do you think anyone’ll notice if we just… stay here tonight?” Alyx asked, as she idly zig-zagged a finger across the lines formed by the checkered squares on Gordon’s thoroughly rumpled shirt. 

With a groan, Gordon extricated his hand from where it was tangled in her hair to check his watch. “Barney’s probably going to come looking for us soon,” he mumbled, resignation evident in his tone. “He wasn’t particularly keen on the idea of us spending the night out here, and… you know how he is.”

She did, and she understood, but she still wasn’t _quite_ ready to leave their little bubble. She rolled over onto her back and closed her eyes, intent on savoring a couple more minutes of peace before they had to return to the real world.

When it became apparent that Alyx was not inclined to overcome the law of inertia on her own, Gordon took it upon himself to convince her to get moving. “We need to get going, but our date doesn’t have to end here,” he breathed into her ear. “God, I can’t wait to get you home…”

That certainly got her attention, in more ways than one. She secretly loved the way Gordon referred to White Forest as _home;_ she hoped it wouldn’t be their home forever, but it was such a comforting thought after having grown up without a real sense of permanence or attachment when it came to places.

She also couldn’t resist the temptation to mess with him, just a little bit.

“Oh yeah?” she challenged, as she forced herself to sit up and straightened her sweater. “And what makes you think I’m going to sleep with you right after our first date, huh?”

For a split second, Gordon looked genuinely wounded, until he registered that she was just barely suppressing laughter. He rolled his eyes and fired back. “Fine, when would you like your chaste goodnight kiss? At the door, or right before we go to sleep in the same bed?”

In response, Alyx flashed a devilish grin and gestured for him to sit up. As soon as he reconfigured his limbs into a cross-legged position, she crawled back into his lap and traced a finger down his chest.

“Actually,” she said, “I think I’d like my goodnight kiss right after I…” She leaned in even closer to whisper obscenities directly into his ear. She could feel his face heating up as she spoke, and she delighted in how he squirmed underneath her.

She lingered for a moment afterwards, purely for dramatic effect, and then pulled away to gauge his reaction.

“Yeah, okay,” he choked out. “I’d like that.” As expected, Gordon’s face was beet red.

Alyx chuckled and patted the top of his head in a way that she hoped came across as both genuinely affectionate and playfully condescending. “We _really_ need to work on your dirty talking.”

Without missing a beat, Gordon muttered, “They didn’t offer that elective at MIT.”

“You have other talents,” she reassured him. His expression brightened at that.

Seeing as she was still partly settled in his lap, she decided not to waste the opportunity to kiss him one last time. She felt safe and secure when Gordon’s arms snaked around her waist once again, and when she closed her eyes, it felt like they were so close that the physical boundaries of their bodies no longer existed. Gordon’s sharp gasp told her that he, too, felt some part of his consciousness melding with hers in real time. 

She’d missed this feeling, and she couldn’t recall the last time she’d experienced it while they were both fully clothed. The fact that it was happening _now_ felt significant, for reasons she couldn’t quite articulate. All she knew was that this had something to do with their vortal bond, and she didn’t want it to end.

After another few seconds—or perhaps minutes—they broke apart, gasping for breath, at which point the comforting, otherworldly feeling promptly faded away. Alyx echoed Gordon’s disappointed groan and gently rested her head against his while they recovered. 

“All right, don’t shoot the messenger, but we really do need to call it a night,” Gordon declared, and the urgency in his voice told Alyx not to argue with him. “I don’t want to worry Barney and also, we’ll _never_ live it down if he comes looking for us and walks in on… _this.”_ He gestured vaguely at their compromising position.

Alyx nodded and rose to her feet, intent on making herself presentable as quickly as possible… just in case. She located her discarded headband and fixed her hair to erase the evidence of their earlier cuddling.

Meanwhile, Gordon busied himself with packing the leftovers back into the picnic basket. Alyx raised a hand to her face to hide her smile; she strongly suspected that whatever they’d eaten had borne little resemblance to actual pizza, but even still, she was very much looking forward to a second helping at some point.

She also noted with amusement that Gordon seemed completely unaware that his hair was sticking up in all directions. After a moment of silent deliberation, she elected not to call attention to that oversight. A little bedhead by itself wasn’t terribly incriminating, and more importantly, it was _adorable._

Neither of them said a word as they folded up the blanket, put out the fire, turned on their flashlights, and made their way back to the truck with a renewed sense of purpose. The silence was charged with emotion and anticipation, and judging by the spring in Gordon’s step and the look on his face, he hadn’t forgotten about her earlier proposition for the next phase of their date.

Once they’d finished packing everything securely into the back of the truck, Gordon opened the passenger side door and gestured for her to get in.

“Nuh uh, don’t even think about it,” she replied with a soft chuckle and a shake of her head. “I know how much you had to drink tonight, and let’s be honest… driving is _not_ your strong suit, even under the best of circumstances.” She held out an open palm. “Come on, hand ‘em over.”

Alyx knew she’d won as soon as Gordon’s shoulders slumped in defeat, but that didn’t stop him from pouting while he handed her the keys and reluctantly climbed into the passenger seat. She flashed him a wink as she made her way around the front of the vehicle, sat down in the driver’s seat, and turned the key in the ignition.

She cast one last glance over her shoulder at the cabin, now dark and empty save for a tall, pale reflection in the window that disappeared when she blinked. _‘Must’ve been an animal,’_ she thought, before she turned her attention back to the driveway in front of them.

Or perhaps she’d imagined it.

Without further ado, she turned on the headlights, shifted into gear, and reached for Gordon’s hand as they headed towards home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, I promise the next chapter is not spicy. No last-minute surprise rating changes here. It's also been semi-drafted since January, so here's hoping it takes me less than 5 months to polish it up and publish it. (No promises, though. I've learned some things since May.)
> 
> Thank you again to everyone who's continued to read, re-read, and say nice things about this fic during its unintentionally very long hiatus. I love every single one of you, and I'm pretty sure I would not have found the motivation to keep working on this without your support. <3


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